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French - Past Historic | ||
Tags: Morphology | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4698 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 1 of 12 10 May 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Il secoua la tête - he shook his head
This is the Past Historic, have I got that right? If so, is this the past tense that one sees in novels etc? My real question is: is it more of a written tense than a spoken one? Thanks! I am working on grammar now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 12 10 May 2012 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I would never use it when speaking, unless the purpose was to give an impression of formality, storytelling or
literary talk. Or as a joke. I would encourage learners to learn to recognize these forms, but no more. Many native speakers can't produce them either. We call this tense the passé simple. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4698 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 3 of 12 10 May 2012 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Right, thanks a lot! I didn't want to learn it as something I might say, if it's something I shouldn't say. I suppose it is a grammar book, not a conversation book, but it would have been nice if they'd mentioned this somewhere. (maybe they have)
Thanks for your help! Just to check: normal spoken tenses are présent, passé simple, imparfait, future simple, plus-que-parfait, also conditional forms, and the subjunctive is used a bit more than in English. ...and the others I would not normally use in speaking. Is this accurate? Edited by mizunooto on 10 May 2012 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 12 10 May 2012 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I thought I could get away with never learning it, but I tried writng some children's stories on Lang-8, and the general opinion seemed to be, that it had to be done in the passé simple.
It's funny that so many people, including the natives, seem to have an instinctive dislike of this tense. To me it just doesn't look French, it's more like Latin or Spanish. But as far as I can tell, if I remember correctly, it's actually pretty regular if you already know the past participle. Edited by schoenewaelder on 10 May 2012 at 2:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 12 10 May 2012 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, except you probably meant passé composé instead of passé simple. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 12 10 May 2012 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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You will encounter it in books so most people who are serious about French need to recognize it, eventually. I have yet to see it in newspapers (at least online), or the few Fremch magazines I have been able to get a hold of, even when most grammar sources include them as a place where one may run into the passé simple.
French is known for is extreme reduction final phonemes, and this is most evident in the passé simple. Those who speak or learn Spanish or Portuguese (languages where the equivalent of the passé simple are required learning for proper conversation), are cognizant that the preterite endings tend to be "long" compared to other tenses (e.g ES: -aste, amos, -asteis, -aron). I feel this may have played a part in the demise of the tense in French, because the reductions became so extreme that they may sound strange and ambiguous. An extreme example is "venir": je vins, il vint, nous vînmes, vous vîntes... yet Germanic languages use ablaut (EN: come/came, DE: sehe/sah), so it is possible to make fully understandable language with just vowel alternation, but I think Latin languages have a bias for clear verbal endings, specially in pro-drop languages (those that do not require the subject to be written since the verb makes the subject's person/number clear), of which Spanish is by far the most pro-drop of all with French, like Germanic languages, not allowing the subject to be dropped. I learned it simply because those of you who learn Spanish must learn its version of the tense, so why would I not do the same for French, even if I know I'll never really speak it. Those who are busier or can't be bothered it is totally acceptable not to learn it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4698 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 7 of 12 10 May 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Oops that's quite right! I think we mentioned the simple one rather a lot now~ Edited by mizunooto on 10 May 2012 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 8 of 12 10 May 2012 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, except I think you mean passé composé, not passé simple, which is the same as what you call Historic Past. As regards the subjunctive, in spoken French you do use the present and perfect subjunctive ("que je fasse", "qu'il ait terminé") but you will never hear the imperfect subjunctive "que j'aimasse" from aimer, for example. However, in formal writing it may still appear. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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