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I picked up a bad habit of using ～たら (a form of conditional) when I mean ～てから
(once something happens, something else will happen) from a friend many years
back while learning Japanese.

In the years since, I learned the difference and felt bad when I still used たら
out of habit. But, I was just thinking, since there are spoken short forms of
various ～て forms (～ておく → ～とく、～ている → ～てる) and I can't help but wonder if this
is another case like that.

In short, is ～たら one of the spoken contractions of ～てから?
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2011-06-09T15:26:02.297
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2011-06-09T16:05:48.380
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usage contractions
Can 【～たら】 be a short form of 【～てから】?
Short answer: No.

～ておく and ～ている can become ～とく and ～てる because they have consecutive vowels,
which are easily slurred/elided, but to get ～てから to become ～たら, you'd have to
drop a consonant, which I don't believe ever happens in Japanese (but I would
welcome a correction here). In addition, the ～たら and ～てから forms have different
functions grammatically, so you can't simply interchange them without
considering the context and the rest of the sentence.
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2011-06-09T15:33:45.017
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I would say No.

> たら has sense of "if ... then ...."
>
> てから "... then ..."

Following with たら is ok

> 雨が降っ **たら** 出かけないことにする。If it rains, I won't go outside.

but following with てから is kinda strange.

> 雨が降っ **てから** 出かけないことにする After it rains, I won't go outside.
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2011-06-09T15:41:41.937
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I'm not the first to say "No", but I want to actually show where ～たら comes
from, if it's not an abbreviated form of ～てから. Consider it a proof of sorts.
:)

The Classical Japanese of early Heian period had a form called ～たり form, which
was used for several jobs that today are fulfilled by the ～た, ～て and (the
modern) ～たり forms. This form was attached to the _renyōkei_ (連用形), which is
the verb stem that ends in I for Godan verbs (this is the stem to which you
attach the ～ます or ～たい endings).

The ~たり form was later shortened to ~た in speech and became the past form we
all known and love today, but before that, it was actually used to build a few
other forms. Now, the ～たり form was actually creating a new verb (just like
adding the potential, passive or causative endings to a verb today create a
new verb), so it had it's own stem to which other endings could be attached.
One of them was the old hypothetical ending ～ば (actually, the famous particle
は which became ば after the verb). ば was attached to the _mizenkei_ (未然形),
which is the verb stem that ends in A for Godan verbs (this is the stem to
which you attach the ～ない ending used for negation). Since, the mizenkei of ～たり
was naturally ～たら, the whole thing together was ～たらば, which at sometime became
a very common complex form for conditionals. e.g. (I invented this up myself,
so it's probably not quite authentic):

> 書きたらば、死ぬ。 If you write, you die.

In modern Japanese, the classical ～ば form became the modern conditional ～ば
which is now attached to the E stem (已然形 _izenkei_ ), and is much better known
as the _-eba_ conditional ending. But what happened to the complex ～たらば～ form?
It was shortened to ~たら, but also started using the different base that ～て and
～た forms (the later also a shortened form of ～たり) were using. In Ichidan verbs
(such as 見る or 食べる) this is still the same as good old _renyōkei_ , but in
godan verb, a few changes occured:

  * wakar **i** \+ tara -> waka **r** \+ tara -> waka **t** \+ **t** ara -> waka **tt** ara
  * kak **i** \+ tara -> ka **i** \+ tara -> ka **it** ara
  * oyog **i** \+ tara -> oyo **i** \+ (voice) + tara -> oyo **i** \+ **d** ara -> oyo **id** ara
  * mat **i** \+ tara -> ma **t** \+ **t** ara -> ma **tt** ara

There are more, but that's the gist of it.
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2011-06-09T16:44:41.437
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