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French subjonctif | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4613 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 9 of 17 28 November 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've noticed that many Brazilians seem to prefer the subjunctive in some fixed expressions: ''Antes que me esqueça...'' (instead of Antes de me esquecer...) ''Depois que você for embora...'' (instead of Depois de você ir embora...) Edited by Medulin on 28 November 2013 at 5:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5111 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 10 of 17 28 November 2013 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't, I think the personal infinitive is quite alive at spoken Brazilian Portuguese.
Actually it is the subjunctive that sounds more 'bookish'. If I think fast I'd go for the personal infinitive, I could only come up with the subjunctive after reflected thought. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6848 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 11 of 17 12 December 2013 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for all your input! And sorry for asking a question and disappearing for two weeks, my life has been kinda crazy recently.
I did not expect to acquire the subjunctive just from reading :). I am familiar with the general concept of subjunctive (learned it once in Spanish). I also know some of the French phrases which require subjunctive (such as Il faut que…) and some of the verb forms but I definitely lack a systematic approach to gather all these bits and pieces and fill in the gaps. Too often does the French verb system impede my speaking. Emk, I love the subjunctivator! I knew the subjunctive descriptions at french.about.com but somehow I completely missed this one! 1e4e6, would you recommend that Practice Makes Perfect book? I think I could use some exercises but I am wondering if a whole book just on subjunctive is not too much (I still focus more on my passive French skills). Are you aware of any other systematic descriptions of subjunctive? Having thought more about it, I guess I am looking for some kind of a cheat sheet / an overall presentation in form of tables, something that would help me to see the 'big picture' of the most important rules and exceptions. I do not know if I am making any sense... and I might just have to open a text editor and try to create something of this kind by myself :). The case of Romanian is really interesting! I was wondering whether some kind of subjunctive constructions can be found in Slavic languages from Balkan sprachbund, and I have found this short part of a Wikipedia article; if you have any sources about this please share. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6006 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 12 of 17 13 December 2013 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
"Depois que você for embora" is not subjunctive. It has a "que", but then it uses the future "for". In Portugal this construction would not be acceptable. I guess it's accepted in Brazil because it's idiomatic. Back to the subjonctif: when I was studying French at an advanced level, my teacher gave us a few exercises to fill in the blanks regarding the use of either the subjunctive or the present. After struggling for a while, I showed the exercise to some friends of a French family. After a heated discussion among them, I (in my 8th year of learning the language) was more confused than ever. Finally, the solutions (after more discussion in class) seemed a bit random. Now, after having learned French for 8 years and having used it as a working language for some 12 more, I can say with a good degree of confidence that many times it depends on what you want to express: doubt, certainty, hope, fear, etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4235 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 17 13 December 2013 at 5:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not an expert on the differences between português europeu and português
brasileiro, but I learnt the former; thus it would always be, <Depois que fores embora> or <Depois fores embora> for the infinitive construction, but this is the future subjunctive? The infinitive and future subjunctive sometimes have same forms if I remeber correctly. To differentiate, I think that irregular verbs have a difference between the future subjunctive and personal infinitive: <Fazei-lo tão pronto como puderdes> for future subjunctive, and <Fazei-lo tão pronto poderdes> for the personal infinitive. I would recommend the book if one wishes to master the subjunctive in all forms, but any verb grammar book should cover this topic. The subjunctive, however, is, like in all Romance languages, extremely fundamental for grammar and usage, so I think time spent on this is quite necessary. That book took me only several weeks to finish, which was faster than when I spent several months on verbs and the subjunctive years ago when I first encountered the subjunctive in Spanish. But the subjunctive in French, although probably not as much used like in Spanish or Portuguese, is important. I think a chart with the expressions that cause the subjunctive to be followed is useful wherewith to start though: http://www.xtec.cat/~sgirona /fle/subjonctif_index.htm This is a very brief summary of some principal usages of the subjunctive, but to master it takes quite some more werk. Edited by 1e4e6 on 13 December 2013 at 6:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4652 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 17 13 December 2013 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Start from Latin and check how it developed in the Romance languages. Latin makes very extensive use of this mood. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4769 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 15 of 17 30 December 2013 at 3:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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This page might be useful:
http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp? id=4237 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| gales87 Pentaglot Newbie Spain Joined 4714 days ago 12 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Welsh, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: German | Message 16 of 17 11 February 2014 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
But isn't it the future subjunctive? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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