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I have not found any sentence using ～さえ～ば with more than one requirement. Let's consider the following sentence with 3 requirements

  • I am healthy
  • I have enough money
  • I can speak English

to be confident. The sentence I want to say is as follows.

If only I am healthy, have enough money and can speak English, I am confident to go everywhere I want.

My attempt is as follows.

元気で、お金が足りて、英語で話せさえすれば、どこでも行きたいのは自信がある。

Is my sentence correct grammatically?

Display Name
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1 Answers1

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Let me correct some minor problems first.

  1. 英語が話せる (can speak English) is better than 英語で話せる (can speak in English) here. See: Difference between を話す and で話す and The difference between が and を with the potential form of a verb.
  2. "to be confident + that ～" is "<relative clause> + 自信がある". And 行く should be turned into the potential form (行ける).

After fixing these, we get:

元気で、お金が足りて、英語が話せさえすれば、どこでも行ける自信がある。

Now, this sentence makes sense, and does not have obvious grammatical errors. That said, this sentence would sound like you are greedy and selfish :-) Basically, you can only hope for one thing when you use ～さえ～ば, because さえ means "only". Well, I have thought the same is true for the English "if only ～" pattern. Is it not?

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naruto
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  • I am not sure that "if only" is restricted with only one requirement because in mathematics, we can have many requirements for this kind of conditional. – Display Name Jun 07 '16 at 14:29
  • You might be thinking "A if and only if B", but this is very different from eg "if only I had more money". It means that B is a necessary precondition for A (and not that B is limited to one condition). Mathematically, I'm not sure what "only one condition" would even mean, since how do you count? Multiple logical propositions can be combined via logical operators to form a new, "single" logical proposition. For similar reasons, while I tend to agree with naruto here, I think the "one thing" in "you can only hope for one thing" is rather subjective. – WeirdlyCheezy Jun 07 '16 at 14:54
  • @WeirdlyCheezy: Yes of course, iff is different thing. – Display Name Jun 07 '16 at 15:18