I have a 785 day streak in Duolingo French and I have just hit the subjective. Regular subjunctive I think have mastered, but irregular verbs? Yikes.
The grammatical explanation included with the lessons is not very helpful, may I add. Luckily I discovered Lawless French some time ago.
But I am actually learning French! Dr. Skull and I are listening to Jane Eyre while we drive to and from Fayetteville, and we've reached the part where Jane is acting as governess for Adele, who speaks only French, so that Jane and Adele have long conversations in French every few pages, and I can understand most of it.
“Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui: car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”
(My translation: "And that means," she said, "that there will be a present for me inside, and maybe for you, miss. Sir talked about you: he asked me the name of my governess, and if she wasn't a little person, skinny and a little pale. I said yes, because it's true, isn't it, miss?")
10 comments:
If it helps, native speakers use the subjunctive "wrong" all the time, at least in casual conversation. Formal writing not so much (more checking happens I suppose)
The subjunctive in English has all but disappeared. When someone (um, me) uses it in writing or speech, most people think I'm making a grammatical error.
I cringe when people use "If I was you" instead of "If I were you."
Just a fun fact, as I am a professor of Spanish, if we don't count stem-changing verbs, which I do not consider them to be irregular verbs, there are only six irregular verbs in the present subjunctive and no irregular verbs in the past subjunctive, if you have mastered the preterit indicative.
I've tried to stop using the subjunctive because people always assume I'm making a grammatical error. But I have read too many 19th century novels.
Fun fact from reading ten billion COMP I essays -- people under 30 no longer use the past perfect or present perfect. They don't even know how to read them, or what they mean. When I teach English Grammar, I still teach these, but the students can't understand what they mean. (The exception is those who read a lot of 19th century novels.)
That's how language works, I know, but still.
When I teach Spanish 101, throughout the semester, I play "English 101 Pop Quiz," by asking them, in English, what is a noun, verb, adjective, etc.
It can be quite scary with the responses or lack of responses.
My husband, who teaches science at the high school level, has said that English courses for our school district focus just on writing, not the particulars of the sentence structure.
That's how English was taught in my high school (using "taught" lightly here). We turned in essays, and got grades, but no one taught us anything about sentence structure or grammar or even how to write essays.
I suspect now that my teachers didn't know any of those things either.
I didn't learn about any of the above until I took Spanish. (Though I do *use* the subjunctive while speaking English, it's just it took Spanish for me to understand why-- now I mentally add a "but I'm not/I don't/etc." to any "If I were" statement.)
My kids don't really write essays either. I'm not sure what they are doing in their English classes. I mean, besides taking quizzes on Ayn Rand books about how selfishness is good and helping people is bad.
I didn't learn any English grammar until grad school, and only then because I had to teach it. Try learning Latin grammar when you don't know English grammar, and when your undergraduate professor clearly doesn't know any either. I still remember the class when I tried to get him to explain what a gerund was.
My kid had to read Ayn Rand too, as well as a book about how pro-choice people want to kill babies. Life in Arkansas.
gerund-- another term I learned in high school Spanish (-ndo = -ing)
I'm not sure that DC1 has learned any of these. DC2 is on her way to being fluent, but I don't know how much actual grammar she's getting.
Knowing English grammar has really helped me learn French, I will say that. The French Duolingo grammar tips do not always tell you *why* things are the way they are, and knowing English grammar helps me figure it out, sometimes.
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