Using "would" to express past tense (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Using "would" to express past tense
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

18 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian	Message 17 of 18 16 October 2012 at 7:15pm \| IP Logged
	Well, it's not that fancy if you know that "will" originally meant "want to". The function as an auxiliary for forming the future tense is only derived from this meaning. The Germanic languages only had a present and a past tense, that's why all other tenses are formed with periphrastic constructions, while Latin and the Romance languages have more synthetic forms. Icelandic still hasn't got a future tense today! "I will go to London" originally meant "I intend to go to London", which of course has the connotation of an action in the future. As time went by, the meaning of "will" changed from the intention to do something to denoting future events. Ironically, in the construction "wouldn't" the former meaning still is preserved, which may cause some confusion among learners of English or make it seem fancy and weird. 1 person has voted this message useful
Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish	Message 18 of 18 17 October 2012 at 2:14am \| IP Logged
	It's fancy/weird in the sense that there's normally one word for "want", but in some contexts it can't be used. Plenty of "weird" things in any language can be explained historically, but this doesn't make them less weird if we look at them synchronically :) BTW the Latin future tense died without leaving any descendants. The Romance future originates from a periphrase too. Edited by Serpent on 17 October 2012 at 2:23am 1 person has voted this message useful

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