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Romance languages and "may/can" | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Syntax | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 9 of 11 13 July 2012 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
It is a fine observation that people often use "können" instead of "dürfen", but not even academics are to blame for using "indirect speech acts". (Speech acts and pragmatic considerations may/can be an additional perspective when discussing such questions.) I once had a friend. Whenever someone asked him "Can you tell me what time it is?" he used to answer "Yes!" and when someone asked him "Can I open the window?" he invariably gave the brilliant answer "I don't know if you can." He was a funny guy. And very annoying ... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mafouz Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5326 days ago 56 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: German, Japanese, French | Message 10 of 11 14 July 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are right in reference to Spanish. You use "poder" to signal your capacity to do something, both in the case it is
natural, derived from your skills, or social, derived from law, rules or the permission from others. This sometimes can bring funny situations. As you probably know, you use the same verb to ask for things, in subjunctive to be more polite "¿Podría alcanzarme la sal, por favor?". I don't think this distinction is made in catalan nor galician, neither. As far as I know this is a feature of "germanic" languages. And you are also correct in that there is a number or constructions used to make these distinctions. The explanations given before for portuguese, french and Italian are also valid for Spanish. 2 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 11 of 11 18 July 2012 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Very VERY interesting and educational answers everyone. I will re-read them because I think they are all top quality. Thanks.
BTW, I guess I was wrong about German kann/darf. From whatever TV I've watched, it seemed to me the scripts were more chary about keeping the distinction, then again, I just probably missed the nuance of "kann" entirely when used in place of "darf". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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