The Secrets of Japanese: -てみる (-te miru)

To understand this installment of The Secrets of Japanese, you need to have learned the "te form" of Japanese verbs. I assume that you know how to recognize it, how to form it, and its basic meaning.Sentences marked with an asterisk (*) are incorrect.

Trying Something, or Trying to Do Something?

The difficulty of learning just what [verb]-てみる means is that many Japanese teachers do not fully unsderstand the word try or the difference between the things traditionally labeled the gerund (-ing) and the infinitive (to [verb]). It's clear to native speakers that "Try to do your homework" is completely different from "Try doing your homework", but for many non-native speakers, the difference is not clear since all they see is "try + -ing as a noun" and "try + infinitive as a noun". Similarly, subtleties in other languages' methods of expressing "try" might not be transparent to native English speakers. Since most books define the expression -てみる as try but don't specifically contrast it with "try to [verb]" (or even explain how to say "try to [verb]"), it can be difficult for native English speakers to determine which senses of try the expression covers. Another factor that makes -てみる difficult to interpret is that some books fail to explain its full range of meaning because they treat it as a set phrase to the exclusion of explaining the meaning of its parts. Sometimes -てみる does not mean try, but if the idea that -てみる is mostly analytically transparent (it means what its parts mean ["do something and see"]), not just an idiom for try, is never validated, then students miss or dismiss the idea and learn to use and interpret the expression only for situations that strictly match the English usages of try, whether they're the right senses of the -てみる or not.

My Japanese teacher in high school translated [verb]-てみる as "try to [verb]" and as "try x". However, she also gave example sentences that didn't fit well with attempting to do something, such as the following variations on the theme of eating sushi.

Incorrect Translation	Correct Alternatives
寿司を食べてみて。 sushi wo tabete mite. *"Try to eat sushi"	"Eat sushi and see [what it is like]." "Try eating sushi." "Try sushi."
寿司を食べてみたいですか。 sushi wo tabete mitai desu ka. *"Would you like/Do you want to try to eat sushi."	"Would you like to eat sushi and see [what it is like]?" "Would you like to try eating sushi?" "Would you like to try sushi?"

Unless the person in question has some sort of physical or mental problem with eating in general or with eating fish specifically, it does not make sense to say "Would you like to attempt to eat sushi". The context of the conversations in class, the textbook's stories, and our exercises never even hinted at such details. Instead of attributing the strangeness of the interpretation to the idiosyncrasies of a foreign language, it makes much more sense to assume that the interpretation is wrong and that the straightforward translation "do [verb] and see [what it's like]/[what happens]" is correct. In specific cases, such as those of food, or where the point is to experience the thing in question, the meaning of "do[verb] and see" is consistent with "Try [noun]" (as in "You should try ginger" or "You should try hot springs"). When one considers the expression -てみる in this light, it becomes clear that it can never mean "try to [verb]": "do [verb] and see" requires that you finish the action in question, while "try to [verb]" allows for the possibility that you might fail to complete it or even to start.

In the interest of allowing for credit to be given where it might be due, I have to say that I can't recall what my textbook said -てみる means (we were using the Ima! series, level 3, which I think was called Hai, Ima), but I distinctly remember that my whole class was confused. Fortunately for students, there are popularly sold reference books that do not confuse the pattern with "try to [verb]". Unfortunately, those books tend to give a correct definition that is not complete.

Rita L. Lampkin's Japanese Verbs & Essentials of Grammar (pg. 37) gives the "do and see" meaning and the "try doing" one, but not "try [noun]".

From Japanese Verbs

おいしいですから、食べてみて下さい。 Oishii desu kara, tabete mite kudasai. "It's delicious, so eat it and see." "It's delicious; try it." (my rendition to illustrate "try [noun]")

怪しい音が聞こえたから、部屋に入ってみました。 Ayashii oto ga kikoetakara, heyani haitte mimashita. "I heard a suspicious noise, so I went into the room to see (check it out)" "I heard a suspicious noise, so I tried going into the room [to see what was up]"(my rendition

Another reference, an nifty book I picked up during my study abroad in Japan titled 「どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞曲」(When and How to Use It: A Dictionary of Japanese Expressions and Sentence Patterns),gives "try doing" as the shortcut translation of -てみる and gives the following English description of its meaning: Try something in order to find out more about it　(pg. 199). When and How to Use It is written in Japanese with explanations of the expressions in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English. It does not provide translations of its examples. The Japanese explanation of the expression translates to "Indicates doing something as a test in order to learn something/find something out."

Adapted From When and How to Use It (translations are my own)

この新しいボールペンを使ってみました。とても書きやすいです。 Kono atarashii BOURU PEN wo tsukatte mimashita. Totemo kaki-yasui desu. "I tried this new ball-point pen. It's very easy to write with."

日光ですか。ぜひ一度行ってみたいと思っていたんです。 Nikkou desu ka. Zehi ichido itte mitai to omotteita n desu. "Nikkou?(a place) I was thinking I'd certainly like to see it [at least] once." ("...like to go there and see what it's like [to go there]")

ちょっとこのスカートをはいてみてもいいですか。 chotto kono SUKAATO wo haite mite mo ii desu ka. "May I try this skirt on for a bit?"

コンサートの切符がまだあるか聞いてみましたが、もうないそうです。 KONSAATO no kippu ga mada aru ka kiite mimashita ga mou nai sou desu. "I tried asking whether there were still tickets, but it seems there aren't any any more."

Although When and How to Use It gives a variety of clear examples, not all of them can be translated according to the "try doing", or "try [verb]ing", pattern. What's going on in the English? Well, we can see from my earlier discussion that "try [noun]" is appropriate whenever the main concern is to experience the noun (to learn what that noun is like). Sometimes, though, the main point of trying something is to test out a certain action or approach as a way to accomplish a particular goal. It seems that that is the major nuance of "try [verb]ing". For instance, if you want to get the taste of some other food out of your mouth so you can appreciate your sushi, someone might tell you to try eating ginger—and though one could respond to the question "what should I use to cleanse my palate?" with "try ginger", one could not tell someone to taste ginger by saying "try eating ginger". Thus, despite the slight overlap in meaning, we can see that the general implications of "try eating ginger" and "try ginger" are different, but they are both consistent with "eat ginger and see"; it just depends on what you see.

Finally, just to play a bit of Devil's advocate, we should ask ourselves how we really know that -てみる means "try [noun]", "try [verb]ing", and "do [verb] and see". After all, if I'm going to question my teacher's interpretation, I should question my own. Furthermore, just because the Japanese expression sometimes matches up with certain uses of the English word try doesn't mean that it actually covers all the same nuances that the English word does. Grammatically, -てみる literally says "[verb] and (then) see", and although the expression lends itself to metaphorical seeing rather than literal seeing, the second examples from Japanese Verbs and When and How to Use It demonstrate that -てみる still retains the much of the meaning of its parts. The food examples I discussed at the beginning of the article and the first example from Japanese Verbs prove that it covers "try [noun]".

Dennou Coil's main character on her virtual phone.

Click here to see a clip of the episode.

The idea that "try [verb]ing" is also covered is supported by Japanese Verbs example number 2 and When and How to Use It example 4. For a definitive example of -てみる in the sense of trying an action as a means to accomplish a goal, I think it'd be fun to consider the "real life" speech of an anime, specifically a scene from the delightfully provocative children's sci-fi show Dennou Coil.The premise of the show is that in the future there are glasses that connect your brain to a physical, three-dimensional virtual reality, which you view and interact with via the special glasses. With the glasses you can type on a keyboard of air, view web pages or email projected on the air in front of you, make phone calls, and even touch virtual pets. Those who do not use the glasses neither see nor are affected by the virtual reality.

In episode 19, the main character's little sister is attacked by a virus that separates her consciousness from her physical body and forces her to wander the virtual world. Left untreated, the girl will fall into a coma. The main character's unusually tech-savvy grandmother has whipped up a hack that will fix the girl's condition, but only if her physical body is within 3 meters of her mind. When the characters are discussing how they can get the girl's mind and body back in the same place, the grandmother says 「可能性は低いが、電話かけてみ」("kanousei wa hikui ga, denwa kakete mi")("The probability [of success] is low, but try calling her"). "Kakete mi", an informal way of giving a command, is equivalent to "kakete mite". The grandmother could not have been saying to try the phone to see what it's like (the characters have all used a telephone before): she can only be saying to test out the possibility of using the phone to reach the girl's mind and tell her where to go to reunite with her body.