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Languages

... said:
The Romance languages have an entire tense which means absolutely nothing and is used in certain grammatical situations just because (subjunctive tense, whoo!).
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Not to be inordinate, but I hardly believe that the subjunctive mood is meaningless, not to mention it's not just found in Romance languages.
 
Zuu said:
Not to be inordinate, but I hardly believe that the subjunctive mood is meaningless, not to mention it's not just found in Romance languages.
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I know it's found beyond the Romance languages, but I am most familiar with its use in the Romance languages and didn't want to make any assumptions about it in other languages.

As for meaningless, I think perhaps I ought to explain. The subjunctive is used only after certain grammatical constructs. It does not contrast with another tense, it simply used after certain constructs because of a variety of historical reasons. The only reason one says "The doctor recommended that he take the medicine"* is because of tradition. There is no difference in meaning - at least to me - between "The doctor recommended that he take the medicine" and "the doctor recommended that he should take the medicine." If in Spanish the subjunctive were to die out, we would not be losing any important distinction. The subjunctive is used only because it "sounds right." It's not like the difference between the simple past "I ate" and the past perfect (?) "I have eaten" where there is a distinction.

Basically, if the subjunctive were to die out, the language wouldn't be losing anything. That is what I mean by it. Of course, there are people who argue that there IS something inherently different about the subjunctive. Really, I'm open-minded on the issue so if you have a different view, I'd be interested in hearing it.

*if you're American, that is. I recall reading that British people are more likely to avoid the subjunctive and say instead "The doctor recommended that eh should take the medicine" or something like that.

EDIT: Found the post.
s_allard said:
Calling the subjunctive a completely separate reality is a bit of an exaggeration. I think linguists are divided over the role of the subjunctive. (I'll admit that I'm more familiar with the linguistics of French than of Spanish). Some people believe that the subjunctive is just a grammatical constraint. Certain constructions take the subjunctive. For example, querer que takes the subjunctive because it is the rule. Metaphysical considerations are quite irrelevant. The vast majority of the subjunctives in Spanish and French are structurally bound.

Another school of thought, associated with Gustave Guillaume in French, believes that there is some special relationship with reality in the use of the subjunctive. I don't have the time to go into the details. The key idea here is that the subjunctive mood requires a certain perception of the state of events. It goes beyond the structural constraints. This applies particularly in those situations where one can indicate a nuance between the indicative and the subjunctive, e.g. tal vez or aunque.

I am of the first school. I don't think the subjunctive adds anything that the indicative cannot do in the same context. How does "Buscan empleados que hablen ruso" differ in meaning from "*Buscan empleados que hablan ruso"? In other words, I believe that the subjunctive is basically meaningless and is essentially a grammatical rule.*
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*I think this is a bad example because the second example IS correct.
 
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I don't know; I think it does contribute to meaning and understanding. But I guess I can see what you're saying. Of course, my only real experience with subjunctive tense is in Latin, where the change in how you conjugate the words is fairly drastic, but to me it just makes sense. Anywho.
 
The subjunctive in Latin makes sense because there is no conditional mood (that I know of), and it's expressed through the subjunctive, further demonstrating the idea of something that isn't definite. Obviously, in modern Romance languages, the conditional is there, and therefore the subjunctive isn't as useful.

And on the topic of noun genders, they're just called masculine, feminine and neuter because that's a name given to them. They could be called blue, green and red - it makes no difference. 'puella' could be called feminine; I could call it "dog" if I wanted to - it's just words attached to these things to help understanding.
 
opaltiger said:
very, very roughly: chmur-lya
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Oh hey, my guess wasn't completely wrong!

I am boring; native English, learning Spanish 'cause High School. If I had any choice aside from Spanish I'd probably take it, to be honest. Unless it were a Slavic (I'm assuming Russian doesn't count as a Slavic language, what with it using a separate alphabet-- I'd actually jump at the chance to learn Russian) or Celtic language, I've very little interest in them. Although Breton would be kind of fun to know, if only just to confuse people, but learning it would be hell.
 
Russian is very definitely a Slavic language. Why would the alphabet matter? Serbian and Bulgarian both use Cyrillic, too.
 
opaltiger said:
Russian is very definitely a Slavic language. Why would the alphabet matter? Serbian and Bulgarian both use Cyrillic, too.
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... oh, so they do. Derp. Well, I'm uninterested in non-Russian Slavic languages, then. :P
 
Lorem Ipsum said:
And on the topic of noun genders, they're just called masculine, feminine and neuter because that's a name given to them. They could be called blue, green and red - it makes no difference. 'puella' could be called feminine; I could call it "dog" if I wanted to - it's just words attached to these things to help understanding.
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Not entirely. They're called masculine and feminine because they use articles that are used to refer to males and female. "El aleman" refers to a male German and "la alemana" refers to a female German. The naming is not arbitrary at all - at least in the Romance languages.
 
Haven't I posted here yet?! *swoops in*

... I uh speak only English fluently. I am boring :\

OH and un poco Espanol from school :) I would like to learn more languages though.
 
I speak English fluently, Chinese semi-fluently (mostly grammar that I have problems with), and learning first-year French at school.

On the topic of French, what's the point of the pronoun "on"? I've heard it's similar to a singular "we", but I'm still confused.
 
French pronouns aren't that complicated. On the Left we have singular. On the right we have plural.:

Je: Me.........................Nous: Us
Tu: You (singular)..........Vous: You (Plural)
Il: Him.........................Ils: Them (male or both genders)
Elle: Her......................Elles: The (Female)

So basically, Je is first person me, or Nous as first person we, referring to a group the speaker is in. Tu and Vous as the second-person "you", for singular and plural respectively. Il and Elle are the third person "Him" and "Her", or "Them", as if talking about the group in question but not directly adressing them.

...Was that too complicated?
 
My first language is English, my learned languages are Spanish, French, and German. More Spanish than the other two though.
 
Leafstorm said:
On the topic of French, what's the point of the pronoun "on"? I've heard it's similar to a singular "we", but I'm still confused.
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"On" when used in books means "one" as in "one should clean one's room". "On" when used colloquially means "we". I was reading this one French book and it's amazing how often they use "on" instead of "nous". So basically, in informal language "on" substitutes "nous". When speaking with any level of formality, "on" just means "one" and you should use "nous".
 
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