Try
Jun 01st 2011 23:48
how-to-phrase
Taro: "What's wrong, Akiko?"
Akiko: "This software won't work. I don't know what to do with this"
Taro: "Did you look for any online support? There should be a lot of useful information on the company's Web site."
Akiko: (A) "OK, I'll try."]
(B) "OK, I'll give it a try."
(C) "OK, I'll try it."
(D) "OK, I'll try to."
(E) "OK, I'll try doing it."
Of (A)-(E), which do you think is (are) natural-sounding? And which is (are) not acceptable?
Thank you so much in advance!
Akiko: "This software won't work. I don't know what to do with this"
Taro: "Did you look for any online support? There should be a lot of useful information on the company's Web site."
Akiko: (A) "OK, I'll try."]
(B) "OK, I'll give it a try."
(C) "OK, I'll try it."
(D) "OK, I'll try to."
(E) "OK, I'll try doing it."
Of (A)-(E), which do you think is (are) natural-sounding? And which is (are) not acceptable?
Thank you so much in advance!
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I don't know what to do with it"
Taro: "Have you looked for any online support?
Akiko: (A) "OK, I'll try."] Fine
(B) "OK, I'll give it / that a try." Fine
(C) "OK, I'll try that."
(D) "OK, I'll try to." Doesn't sound quite right in the context
(E) "OK, I'll try doing that."
Akiko: "This software doesn't work. [More natural alternative: "I can't get this program to work." Note: 「ソフト」 is used differently in Japanese than "software" is used in English. The usual words for a piece of software are "program" and "application" ("app" for short).]
I'm not certain why (D) doesn't sound very natural.
Would you mind if you'd explained it?
Here's an example where it sounds more natural to me.
"Could you write a draft of the letter by Tuesday so that we'll have time to discuss it before the meeting?"
"OK, I'll try to."
Here's my guess as to why this sounds more natural. As you know, "try to ～" can mean two different things: ～おうとする and ～てみる. In your example, the meaning is ～てみる; in mine, the meaning is ～おうとする. I'm not sure about this, but I think when "try" means ～てみる, the short response "I'll try" will always sound more natural than the short response "I'll try to," which is short for "I'll try to do that." "I'll try to do that" only makes sense for the ～おうとする meaning. I think the corresponding sentence for the ～てみる case would always be "I'll try doing that."
D is also good but is less common.
C is okay, but mari's correction makes it even better.
E includes too many gratuitously redundant, unnecessary, superfluous extra words that don't add anything and aren't needed. It makes the reader feel like you could have said the same thing much more succinctly.