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En inglés, hay que hacer las cosas con voluntad!

 

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  #1  
Old February 09, 2010, 01:37 PM
CarmenCarmona CarmenCarmona is offline
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Question 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  
Old February 09, 2010, 01:52 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CarmenCarmona View Post
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)

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.
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Old February 09, 2010, 01:56 PM
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Originally Posted by chileno View Post
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.
Would you say:Tuve que alientarme/motivarme (a la fuerza) cantar esta mañana?
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Old February 09, 2010, 01:57 PM
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Would you say:Tuve que alentarme/motivarme (a la fuerza) a cantar esta mañana?
If I had fiaca, yes.
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Old February 09, 2010, 02:09 PM
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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 ...
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Old February 10, 2010, 01:16 AM
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Carmen is right. Look here.
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Old February 10, 2010, 03:12 AM
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Carmen is right. Look here.
Right about what?
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Old February 10, 2010, 06:50 AM
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Right about what?
The way that simple future was formed in Spanish.
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Old February 10, 2010, 06:53 AM
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Originally Posted by Perikles View Post
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 ...
Now that you mention the German 'werden' meaning 'to become', it reminds me of something called 'semantic primitives' which are predicates that are part of the definition of many words, such as 'cause, become, like, have...' and why not? verbs 'will' and 'haber' ¿?

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...


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Originally Posted by irmamar View Post
Carmen is right. Look here.
It doesn't explicitly say anything about 'will' in particular, but I suppose it can be applied to the explanation as well...

Last edited by CarmenCarmona; February 10, 2010 at 06:56 AM.
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Old February 10, 2010, 07:07 AM
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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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