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Using "would" to express past tense | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 18 15 October 2012 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
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In English, it is possible to relate a past event using a "would" construction.
For example, It was a cold day, my car would not start. He would not move, no matter how many times I asked. German doesn't seem to allow this type of expression, "would" is used in a conditional sense. It causes a bit of confusion when you try and translate these English examples literally. Do other languages allow "would" to refer to past events or is this peculiar to English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 18 15 October 2012 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
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If you look at it carefully, you'll see that's not really a conditional in the usual sense [if (condition), then (main clause)] -- you're describing a past event (from the speaker's perspective) that is in the future from the perspective of another past (the 'main') event. Just as in can -> could, will -> would.
While the use of a 'conditional' verb for that purpose may of course be more or less peculiar to some languages, the whole sense of the construction should be transferable to most. In Spanish, very similar uses of the conditional tense (in a non-conditional sense) are not rare at all: Dijo que vendría (he said he would come). but unfortunately I'm not 100% sure that would sound OK in German, so I'll leave that to others. WRT to translation you only want to be as literal as possible as long as meaning is preserved, the other way around is exactly how bad things start to happen. Edited by mrwarper on 15 October 2012 at 11:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4641 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3 of 18 15 October 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegian is pretty much like English:
will - ville It was a cold day, my car wouldn't start : Det var en kald dag, bilen min ville ikke starte. As regards the second example "He would not move, no matter how many times I asked", I think it is a slightly different meaning of the verb. If you translate that phrase into Spanish, you cannot use the conditional in the way mrwarper correctly suggests for "he said he would come", but rather use "querer" (as in "be willing to") in past imperfect: No quería moverse, aunque se lo pedí muchas veces. I believe that in German you could use "willen" in that second sentence, but not in the first one (with the car). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 18 15 October 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the issue isn't that you can form past tense with would, but that English forms conditionals with the past tense (or some other old tense that looks exactly like it?) of "will". The past tense is the regular usage, the conditional use is the special one, probably because English doesn't have a proper conditional tense. It's kind of like forming an ersatz future tense with "will" because English doesn't have a proper future tense.
Silly thought: Hey, maybe it's related? English forms its conditional by using the past tense of its future tense marker ("will"). French and Spanish conditionals are kind of mixtures of future and past tense, too. So in French "to eat" is "manger", right? Future tense FPS "je mangerai". Imperfect tense "je mangeais". Conditional "je mangerais". The conditional form is like a mix of the future and past forms. It's similar in Spanish. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 18 15 October 2012 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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The problem with would is that it is actually related to will, and will is not just a future marker -- as a noun, it is synonym of determination. Now these different meanings permeate would as well, and then you hit a common translation bump: meanings clearly separated in the TL are not so in the original, which usually leads to a lot of hair splitting.
As Ogrim correctly states, the use of conditional in Spanish would fit your first example (future of the past), but is not especially good for the second one (which is not a usual conditional either) because it dwells more on the side of volition/willingness, which you may not have thought of beforehand. Spanish will handle that with a number of possibilities (the conditional still being one of them, though): -No quería moverse (this is going out on a limb and adventuring why he wouldn't move -- just because he didn't want to) -No iba a moverse (more open to interpretation) -No se movería (this practically requires an additional explanation, hence not being very good for the 2nd example in isolation) Now, if this were in the middle of some context instead of an isolated example, we could argue in favour of one translation or the other, a moot point as it is. On a side note, it is very interesting to notice the whole would/will/volition connection in another Germanic language :) Edit: @Ari well noted, it's much more interesting to look at the question from that angle -- since obviously would is the past of will, why would 'would' become a 'conditional' thing? And probably the reason is connected, as you pointed out, to conditional tenses being a kind of intermediate construction of past and future: a future of the past, somewhat hypothetical at the time. This leads to a very interesting connection with the subjunctives, the hypothetical verb tenses par excellence, a must in regular conditional constructions (if I were -> that's a subjunctive there), and merged with the regular past (for all verbs except 'to be') in English... :) Edited by mrwarper on 15 October 2012 at 1:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 18 15 October 2012 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
As I pointed out in another thread recently, "If I were" isn't actually a subjunctive. It's often called "subjunctive" but it's not really and it doesn't work the way subjunctive works in Romance languages. Some grammarians call it the "irrealis" mood*, which is a fun name. English does have a subjunctive, and it works in similar ways to the way it works in Romance languages. "I demand that he be here at nine o'clock sharp." That's a real English subjunctive. The other one might be called "subjunctive" in daily speech, but when talking grammar they should be separated. * Turns out Wikipedia classifies irrealis as a family of moods which includes the subjunctive, making things a lot more complicated. It does not, however, include "If I were" as an example of English subjunctive. Do look at the Wikipedia "irrealis" page; it's full of awesome grammatical moods in all kinds of languages! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 18 15 October 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I pointed out in that other thread how the whole irrealis vs subjunctive distinction on the vague basis of how hypothetical things are (rather than on the structures involved, which is way more clear) seems like sheer splitting hairs to me :)
However, unless you can come up with a good counterexample, 'If I were + conditional' works EXACTLY like 'si yo fuera + condicional' in Spanish, and that is past subjunctive, so I don't see why the English one can't be called the same. The English subjunctive which name hasn't been disputed yet seems equivalent to the Spanish subjunctive present, so it'd be subj. present vs subj. past on one side, and subjunctive vs irrealis on the other one. Different labels for those so inclined, same stuff under the hood. Or is it the bonnet? The irrealis wikipedia page is awesome indeed, but one has to wonder why there isn't a single language that makes all those distinctions :) Edited by mrwarper on 15 October 2012 at 2:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 18 15 October 2012 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hm, I might be out of my depth here (especially when it comes to Spanish grammar), but "If I were" has nothing to do with the past. In fact, it's generally used of the present and future, but NOT the past:
Present: "If he were here now ..." Future: "If I were to die tomorrow ..." But past: "If I had been there ..." And of course using the present subjunctive in an "if" phrase is ungrammatical: *"If I be a better man". So saying that "I were" is the past tense of "I be" sounds illogical to me. But past subjunctive in Spanish is hardly my forte, so tell me how it works there. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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