Nice site! Thank you for making it possible:) I have just came across this grammar in a sentence in a novel by Yoshimoto Banana. But I cannot get the sense of this structure with the verb 思う.
The sentence is like the following 'だからこれは酔って見ている悪夢の続きだと思おうとした。'
Can I translate it literally? Like "I tried/was about to think about..." or "I was about to think that..."?
That would be my guess, but I imagine it might become a bit easier to decipher with the following sentences. If the subject was about to think something like you're guessing, I'd think something might come up next that would make them think otherwise.
ようとする focuses on the timing aspect, that is, something is about to happen. Often used to contrast it with something that starts afterwards (and stops whatever action was going to take place).
Pet peeve here. This よう reads the same as ようになる. However, it's not よう, it's the Volitional Form of the verb. The way the definition is presented is confusing, and I keep missing these grammar questions because I am looking for よう, not the volitional form.
can I suggest changing the "(About to) try to A" part of the meaning into "try to A" ? The reason being that the "Be about to A;" meaning already shows that usage so the "(About to)" in parenthesis in the second meaning seems redundant, and also the example sentence below in which "tried to" fits better than "about to try to"
ゴミ、捨てようと為たけど、塵箱が一杯だったよ。 I tried to throw away the trash, but the trash can was full.
I must have missed that when it was first posted! Just updated the name on the page. Thanks for pointing it out.
It still reads as "V-ようとする" for me, shouldn't it be "V-とする" or "V(vol.)-とする"? I get very confused by this (maybe it's just me), but I've known this expression for years and now I keep using it wrongly, because I keep thinking I should be using よう : /
My hope (not everyone is going to know "vol", but I am pretty sure that using the conjugation as a suffix (ます、ない、よう) is at least somewhat common on other sites as well.
