En inglés, hay que hacer las cosas con voluntad!

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)

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?

If I had fiaca, yes. :D

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 ...:)

Carmen is right. Look here. :)

Right about what? :thinking::)

The way that simple future was formed in Spanish. :)

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...


It doesn't explicitly say anything about 'will' in particular, but I suppose it can be applied to the explanation as well...

I've never studied linguistics or the history of English in particular, so I can't say much more. Interesting, though.

Let's see this semester, I'm gonna study Middle English...what a nuisance!

I studied Old English but I forgot almost everything...

@Perikles, what is your field of study?

An embarrassing question. I studied physics and maths, and gave up a PhD in atmospheric physics because it was too boring. I then proceeded with a distance-learning degree in German, with some Indo-European background. I then spent some tedious years programming computers until I gave that up to do a degree in Ancient Greek, and then I did a PhD in Greek language, studying ancient Greek ideas of etymology. I have omitted a few other minor things from all that. :rolleyes:

Are you satisfied now? haha and why embarrassing? it's rather kind of praiseworthy!

What do you mean with 'some Indo-European background'? (Taking into account that I know Indo-European is the alleged origin of almost all languages, except in America)

You mean you studied the influence of other languages on modern German?

I mean I studied the taxonomy of Indo-European languages and their development into the languages we have today, so I have some idea of the connections between, say, German and English, looking at things like various Germanic sound shifts, and the influence Greek had on Latin. The history of German is interesting, but I got rather involved in Middle High German poetry, so I'm really no expert here. I'm no expert anywhere really.

By the way, the Indo-European proto-language is the origin of most languages in Europe and India (duh!) not the world. Nor is it the basis of Hungarian, Turkish, Finnish nor Basque. :)

That's why I said 'almost all languages in the world'; and except for the American continent (no le busques las 5 patas al gato!)

Ah, but it's not almost all languages. I don't have the numbers, but of the 7,000 languages in the world, let's say 3,000 in the Americas, leaving 4,000 total. I imagine fewer than 1,000 are Indo-European. Nothing like almost. :p:) I'd be interested in seeing some stats on this, by the way.

Ok, one of these days when I finish my exams I'll take out my Old English notes, but I only remember that in all continents, except for America and Oceania (now that I think about it and leaving Antarctica aside!), all languages originated from Indo-European except for those four you said, or even two or three other ones more.

You never mentioned Oceania. :whistling: Er - what about Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean.....?... And several hundreds of languages in Africa...? ...

Have a look here, Wiki. What you might have meant is that from the point of view of geographical area covered, the Indo-European languages cover a larger area than any other family.

I was adding Oceania right now and I've happened to be wrong!!

That was probably what my lecturer meant!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family

at the end of that site there's a map with the main language families...

However, they are mere hypothesis, ain't they?

Sí, pero bastante sólidas. (pl. Hypotheses):rolleyes: