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En inglés, hay que hacer las cosas con voluntad!This is the place for questions about conjugations, verb tenses, adverbs, adjectives, word order, syntax and other grammar questions for English or Spanish. |
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#1
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En inglés, hay que hacer las cosas con voluntad!
While studying 'Morfosintaxis' I found something really curious:
In order to form the future in English we use the auxiliary 'will', which at the same time means 'voluntad' as a noun. In Spanish, in order to express obligation, we use the auxiliary 'haber' (in a weird way, I do not know why) like this: -He de hacer algo; has de hacer algo; hemos de hacer algo; etc. (meaning 'I must do something') Therefore, what I actually want to say is that the future simple in Spanish is made up of one verb plus the auxiliary 'haber' as well: -Yo cantar(he); tú cantar(has); nosotros cantar(hemos) That's why the title of this thread is called like that, isn't it paradoxical? (I mean the idiosyncrasy of each language) |
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#2
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Hmmm. How would you translate the following? You have to will yourself to sing this morning. I have always said that all languages have their own idiotsyncracy. |
#3
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Would you say:Tuve que alientarme/motivarme (a la fuerza) cantar esta mañana?
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#4
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If I had fiaca, yes.
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#5
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Interesting, but I suspect all coincidental. For a start, all Germanic languages lost their future tenses, not only English. German Ich werde singen makes no sense when the verb werden is translated on its own as to become, so there seems no reason to assign a meaning to will which equally makes little sense in its use in the future. Further, there is the mysterious question of the position of shall as an alternative to will to form the English periphrastic future, suggesting an ought to rather than a want to.
I guess the future endings of verbs in Spanish are derived directly from Latin future tenses, e.g 3rd conugation Latin futures -am; -es; -et; -emus; -etis; -ent. And if the standardization of regular endings in the future results in the same endings as other tenses, on a different stem, then the remarkable likeness with he has ha hemos... is not that remarkable really. Fascinating all the same ... |
#8
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The way that simple future was formed in Spanish.
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#9
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On the other hand, yeah, 'shall' connotates obligation just as 'haber de hacer algo', so 'will' might have risen in order to avoid that uncomfortable meaning and I'm even hypothesizing that the Church has something to do with it... Quote:
Last edited by CarmenCarmona; February 10, 2010 at 06:56 AM. |
#10
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I've never studied linguistics or the history of English in particular, so I can't say much more. Interesting, though.
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