4 ms·

I think that's subjunctive, right? Subjunctive in English is indeed really obscure... I seem to recall the rules being weird in English, but I think it was some

I think that's subjunctive, right? Subjunctive in English is indeed really obscure... I seem to recall the rules being weird in English, but I think it was something along the lines of: you have to use subjunctive when the hypothetical would be outright impossible? (e.g. "If I were you") In your example it's unclear whether that's the case or not as it might depend on the context, so my understanding was it might need to be indicative in that case. I think that's a bit different from being conditional, though, right?

goodcanadian 7y ago
I don't think it needs to be impossible, merely hypothetical. For example, I might say, "If I were to go into town today, is there anything you would like me to get for you?"
DFHippie 7y ago
It's past subjunctive. The present subjunctive is still around but scarce: "Lest he think less of me" or, in a frozen expression, "Be it ever so humble ...".
pge 7y ago
yes - subjunctive. It comes from English's Germanic roots. Compare the German, "Wenn ich König von Deutschland wäre..." to the English translation, "If I were King of Germany..." and note the similarity of the verbs "wäre" and "were." In English, what looks like a plural form ("were") in place of a singular ("was") actually comes from a Germanic singular form of the subjunctive. Both the German words "waren" (plural indicative form - "we/they were ...") and "wäre" (singular subjunctive form - "(if) I/he were") become "were" in English. (And to confuse things, in English, the plural subjunctive is also "were" and is thus indistinguishable from the indicative. "We were kings..." v. "If we were kings...") In both languages, the subjunctive is used in this case for a condition contrary to fact - I am not the King of Germany (nor am I a German pop singer from the 80s!).
lmkg 7y ago
The subjunctive and conditional are complimentary. In the construction "If X then Y," X will be in the subjunctive and Y will be in the conditional. The conditional also comes up on its own in lots of places, but the subjunctive rarely exists outside of contexts that could be re-written in that form.
mikorym 7y ago
The other interesting thing about the subjunctive is that it is not preserved in translation. For example: "Que tengas un buen día," would translate to: "Have a nice day." So, in Spanish the subjunctive is not strictly used for conditional situations. It is not really that you consider that the other person may have a bad day. The closest way to say that in English is: "May you have a nice day." Like a lot of commentators are observing, it is not that clear whether you need a subjunctive. In fact, if you look at Afrikaans, there are only four tenses: past, present, future and historical present. And Afrikaans is considered a full scientific languages: You can translate any scientific article into Afrikaans. On the topic of languages from South Africa, you also have noun classes in all of the 9 official languages that are not derived from European languages. These classes are a type of concord that have nothing to do with tense, but rather with types of nouns. They are also not strictly necessary, but they make it easier to follow a conversation. One way in which they achieve this is that if you say something like "I have an axe and a shovel," and later that "I often use it in the garden," then you will be able to know which one of the two you are referring to since they are in different classes and the word "it" need to be in concord with the noun. If they are in the same class, then you don't have concord distinction when referring to the object. I think the development of this feature are more to distinguish objects and subjects in sentences, as they are more likely to be different types of objects (e.g.: a human and a thing) and hence more likely to be in different noun classes. An axe being in a different class than a shovel is more of an coincidence.

goodcanadian 7y ago

I don't think it needs to be impossible, merely hypothetical. For example, I might say, "If I were to go into town today, is there anything you would like me to get for you?"

DFHippie 7y ago

It's past subjunctive. The present subjunctive is still around but scarce: "Lest he think less of me" or, in a frozen expression, "Be it ever so humble ...".

pge 7y ago

yes - subjunctive. It comes from English's Germanic roots. Compare the German, "Wenn ich König von Deutschland wäre..." to the English translation, "If I were King of Germany..." and note the similarity of the verbs "wäre" and "were." In English, what looks like a plural form ("were") in place of a singular ("was") actually comes from a Germanic singular form of the subjunctive. Both the German words "waren" (plural indicative form - "we/they were ...") and "wäre" (singular subjunctive form - "(if) I/he were") become "were" in English. (And to confuse things, in English, the plural subjunctive is also "were" and is thus indistinguishable from the indicative. "We were kings..." v. "If we were kings...") In both languages, the subjunctive is used in this case for a condition contrary to fact - I am not the King of Germany (nor am I a German pop singer from the 80s!).

lmkg 7y ago

The subjunctive and conditional are complimentary. In the construction "If X then Y," X will be in the subjunctive and Y will be in the conditional. The conditional also comes up on its own in lots of places, but the subjunctive rarely exists outside of contexts that could be re-written in that form.

mikorym 7y ago

The other interesting thing about the subjunctive is that it is not preserved in translation. For example: "Que tengas un buen día," would translate to: "Have a nice day." So, in Spanish the subjunctive is not strictly used for conditional situations. It is not really that you consider that the other person may have a bad day. The closest way to say that in English is: "May you have a nice day." Like a lot of commentators are observing, it is not that clear whether you need a subjunctive. In fact, if you look at Afrikaans, there are only four tenses: past, present, future and historical present. And Afrikaans is considered a full scientific languages: You can translate any scientific article into Afrikaans. On the topic of languages from South Africa, you also have noun classes in all of the 9 official languages that are not derived from European languages. These classes are a type of concord that have nothing to do with tense, but rather with types of nouns. They are also not strictly necessary, but they make it easier to follow a conversation. One way in which they achieve this is that if you say something like "I have an axe and a shovel," and later that "I often use it in the garden," then you will be able to know which one of the two you are referring to since they are in different classes and the word "it" need to be in concord with the noun. If they are in the same class, then you don't have concord distinction when referring to the object. I think the development of this feature are more to distinguish objects and subjects in sentences, as they are more likely to be different types of objects (e.g.: a human and a thing) and hence more likely to be in different noun classes. An axe being in a different class than a shovel is more of an coincidence.