Translation for "I would buy a car if I had the money"

[GenjiMain]

Hi all. In Genki 2 the translation provided for the phrase above is お金があったら、車を買うんですけど。Do the ん and けど have some particular role in this phrase for the translation to make sense? My guess is the けど ending implies some kind of uncertainty, but I have no idea what the ん could mean. Could the same sentence be translated as お金があったら、車を買うでしょう?

Thanks.

 

[OoTmaster]

In that sentence ん is used as explanation. The けど functions as a "but", "however" etc in this context. The implication is that you don't have money. So it works like "If I had money, I would buy a car but (I don't have money). At least that's how I understand it. A native speaker may be able to explain it better.

 

[Majestic]

The same sentence could be translated as you suggested, but the nuance changes.

～でしょう isn't used in this case because it sounds too definite. It changes the feeling from "I'd like to do x, but the conditions of y are not favorable" into something more declarative ("I will do x, once y is becomes a reality").

The final けど is a softener. It is very much like the sentence ending of "but" used by people from some English-speaking countries (particularly Ireland.) It is just a device used to soften the end of a sentence, and to segue to the next thought. So whereas your ～でしょう implies the speaker will absolutely buy a car when/if the money comes in, the sentence in the Genki example implies that the speaker would probably buy a car if some money comes in.

The explanatory の is explained elsewhere on this site and in other places.

 

[Toritoribe]

As OoTmaster-san wrote, けど implies that the speaker actually don't have money, so it's equivalent to the subjunctive in the original English sentence. On the other hand, でしょう can be simple conditional "I'll buy a car if I have money" other than Majectic-san's interpretation "I would probably buy a car". It doesn't have a nuance "I actually don't have money", anyway.