～てみる

RuleVerb te-form + miru: marks an attempt, "try V-ing (to see)."

Curiosity

How do you express trying something to see the outcome, as in "try eating this dish," in Japanese?

Intuition

miru ("to see") adds the sense of "do it and see how it goes." Literally "do X and then see (the result)." A nuance of testing without certainty.

Visualization

taberu (eat) → tabete (te-form) → tabete miru (try eating). miru on the te-form marks an attempt.

食べるdictionary form

Essence

Verb te-form + miru (tabete miru, itte miru). The auxiliary miru is usually written in hiragana (to distinguish from 見る "to see"). It marks an exploratory attempt and pairs well with suggestions (yatte mite kudasai) or volition (itte miyou).

Examples

この服を着てみてもいいですか。

May I try on these clothes?

新しいレストランに行ってみました。

I tried going to the new restaurant.

もう一度考えてみます。

I will try thinking about it once more.

Mini-quiz

Which expresses "try writing with this pen"?