やればできるさ is a sentence that is found everywhere, especially in lyrics. I have seen it translated as:
1. You can do it (which actually means You are able to do it successfully or You can achieve it).
2. You can do it if you try.
Here is my interpretation:
やれ is from やれる which is from やる. やる means “to do”. やれる means “to be able to do”. ば means something like “if so”. So, my interpretation of やれば is “If you can (make yourself) do it”.
できる is 出来る which means “to be able to do it (successfully)”.
So, my interpretation of やればできる is “If you can make yourself do it, you will be able to do it (successfully).” Sometimes, you just have to do something, so it is not up to you to “try” it or not. In other words, neither of the above translations is precise.
And さ is just an emphasis that it will happen.
Also, I have seen 成功できる. But in this particularly case, it will be redundant to add “成功” because できる already means you will do it successfully. Will it be different if I write やれば成功できるさ？
Any thoughts? Thank you.
1 comment
やれば is the ば conditional form of やる, not やれる. To form the ば conditional form of a godan verb (like やる), you change the final vowel sound to ‘e’ and add ば–hence やる into やれば. To form the ば conditional form of a ichidan verb (like やれる), you change the final る to れば. So the ば conditional form of やれる is やれれば. (Note that I’m just spelling this out to be grammatically complete; in practice, conditionals with potential verbs are very rare, but that is how it would be formed.)
Tl;dr: the れ in やれば is part of the conjugation of the ば form, not an indication of the potential form