You know you're a language nerd when...

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Lur
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Lur » 2013-02-17, 21:28

A simple past tense? What did you people do to turn a simple past tense into something "snobbish"? :shock: I am still disappointed at the disappearance of the future subjuntive in Spanish... :lol:
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby OldBoring » 2013-02-18, 1:40

Future subjunctive doesn't exist in modern Italian. But who knows, maybe in medieval Italian...?

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby JackFrost » 2013-02-18, 2:46

Latin had the future subjunctive, but it did not survive in the Vulgar Latin stage.. The one in Spanish and Portuguese came from the Latin future perfect instead and it appears that Old Italian didn't have it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_verbs
Last edited by JackFrost on 2013-02-18, 5:42, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby OldBoring » 2013-02-18, 3:00

Thanks! :)
We all complaint about the complexity of the tenses in Romance languages, when Latin was far worse!

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Lazar Taxon » 2013-02-18, 3:04

Latin even had a future imperative (amato!, amatote! vs. ama!, amate!).
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby JackFrost » 2013-02-18, 5:48

Maybe to be clearer, there was no distinct future subjunctive in Latin, but there is a periphrasis to invoke it (if I remember right, periphrasises aren't common in Latin).
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby הענט » 2013-02-18, 16:38

Luke wrote:A simple past tense? What did you people do to turn a simple past tense into something "snobbish"? :shock: I am still disappointed at the disappearance of the future subjuntive in Spanish... :lol:


I was wondering how come the future subjunctive wasn't included in my new grammar book. :)

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Lur » 2013-02-18, 17:27

I don't even know how to use it :cry:
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby JackFrost » 2013-02-18, 18:11

Why bother include it in the grammar book if no one uses it? It's like English grammar books don't include the archaic conjugations for I, thou, he/she/it, and we/ye/they. Or the French's past imperative and the double present perfect.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Lur » 2013-02-18, 20:52

Still... :(

And I wanted to learn these archaic English conjugations. Now I have one more thing to look up.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby johnklepac » 2013-02-19, 4:58

JackFrost wrote:the double present perfect.

Just reminded me of the Japanese verb "motteitteiru," which means "to be owning" or - since "owning" also means "to be holding" - "to be be holding." An odd construction. :)

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby johntm » 2013-02-19, 5:01

JackFrost wrote:double present perfect.

Whoa, explain please. Google gave nothing.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby johnklepac » 2013-02-19, 5:04

johntm wrote:
JackFrost wrote:double present perfect.

Whoa, explain please. Google gave nothing.

If I understand correctly, it means making a continuous action even more continuous, like changing "I am going to the store" to "I am in the process of being in the process of going the store." Eh, that wasn't great. Hard to explain, I guess. But I never got that far in French, so maybe it means something different there.

Lol, past imperative. "You'd better have done this!"

Oh, and you know you're a language nerd when you've heard of Sorbian and don't live in Germany (or maybe Poland or the Czech Republic).

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby JackFrost » 2013-02-19, 6:48

I translated it from French: "passé surcomposé". It uses two past participles with the auxiliary avoir ("to have"), hence the "double" description that used in some other languages like Swedish and German. :P
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby הענט » 2013-02-19, 9:21

johnklepac wrote:
johntm wrote:
JackFrost wrote:double present perfect.

Whoa, explain please. Google gave nothing.

If I understand correctly, it means making a continuous action even more continuous, like changing "I am going to the store" to "I am in the process of being in the process of going the store." Eh, that wasn't great. Hard to explain, I guess. But I never got that far in French, so maybe it means something different there.

Lol, past imperative. "You'd better have done this!"

Oh, and you know you're a language nerd when you've heard of Sorbian and don't live in Germany (or maybe Poland or the Czech Republic).
Yes. I've heard of Sorbian many times and even looked it up. One of the varieties uses the grapheme ř, but it's pronounced differently than in Czech :)

JackFrost wrote:Why bother include it in the grammar book if no one uses it? It's like English grammar books don't include the archaic conjugations for I, thou, he/she/it, and we/ye/they. Or the French's past imperative and the double present perfect.


I agree. That's what I like about this book. It teaches the language spoken nowadays. I still have an old Italian excersise book which teaches some of the archaic contractions. I think it's from early 50's :)

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Car » 2013-02-19, 10:30

Marah wrote:
I don't care much to read old literature, so the simple past probably isn't INCREDIBLY important (I'm decent at recognizing it), but since it's nothing incredibly hard I'd feel like I cheated not learning it

Hum, saying you'll only come across the simple past if you read old literature is not really accurate. It's very well alive in modern literature and in newspapers. If you want to sound educated it's perfectly normal to use it, even orally. Learning the "il, elle / ils, elles" conjugation is useful whenever you have to write an essay or whenever you have to give a talk.


I didn't say old literature only, it just seems to be more common there. As a non-native not living in a French-speaking country, you're not very likely to have to use it. E.g. we weren't expected to use it in essays or presentations at uni, but French wasn't the main part of my studies.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby johnklepac » 2013-02-19, 14:57

JackFrost wrote:I translated it from French: "passé surcomposé". It uses two past participles with the auxiliary avoir ("to have"), hence the "double" description that used in some other languages like Swedish and German. :P

Oh, yeah, I forgot. I haven't actually used the word "present perfect" in a long time.

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Dormouse559 » 2013-05-05, 17:17

When you get really excited upon hearing "haitch" in person for the first time.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Ciarán12 » 2013-05-06, 11:11

Dormouse559 wrote:When you get really excited upon hearing "haitch" in person for the first time.


"haitch"? Like, the letter?

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Re: You know you're a language nerd when...

Postby Dormouse559 » 2013-05-13, 2:46

Sorry for not responding. I didn't see your post. :blush: Yes, I mean the letter. Everyone says aitch over here, so haitch has been this kind of mythical letter name I've heard about but never encountered.
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