subjuncitve

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 17, 2010 at 7:52pm

Don't worry too much if it takes a while to get used to the various subtleties of when to use the subjunctive. To give you an overall idea, the subjunctive is equivalent of English constructions such as David leaving, him helping me, for them to come back etc, where you're not explicitly stating that something happened/will happen, but rather you're imagining a "snapshot" of a situation.

So for example:

Je veux qu'il revienne.
I want him to come back.

Another major area where the subjunctive is used is in the equivalent of "that..." clauses of various verbs. In English, there are various verbs where you can "postpose" the verb. For example, you can say:

David said that Mark came -> Mark came, David said

However, notice that it doesn't work in a case like this:

David requested that Mark came -> Mark come, David requested

On the whole, in the cases like this example where you can't postpose the main verb in English, the equivalent in French uses a subjunctive in the that clause (que... in French).

Then as an extension to this, there are various cases where French arbitrarily uses the subjunctive "just because it does". You may want to have a look at the section on the main web site detailed some uses of the subjunctive.

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Permalink Reply by karen sigley on February 18, 2010 at 6:11am

Hi
thank you so much for your response. i will keep working on it and trying to figure it out.
Thanks again
Bonne Journee

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on February 18, 2010 at 4:18pm

I have learnt a rule of thumb about subjunctive.

When you want to express actions or ideas which are subjective or otherwise uncertain: will/wanting, emotion, doubt, possibility, necessity, judgment.

Let us say you know a beautiful girl.

If you want to say she is the most beautiful girl I have ever met, you should use the subjunctive.

Why? The subjective nature. In other words it is your opinion. It is not a general concept or people of the world don't consider she as the number 1.



It is necessary ... [ This is in your opinion. In other words it borders subjective. In French you should write -----> il est nécessaire que


I know students of French find that the subjunctive is very difficult to master. Though I wrote my opinion, I am forced to look at the dictionaries or post here for the clarification.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 19, 2010 at 9:23am

The list you mention is another way of looking at things, and what is commonly listed in grammar books. The problem with it is that it "fails to see the wood for the trees" in some sense: it gives a list of seemingly not very related notions, and actually trying to apply them to a particular use of the subjunctive can lead to questionable arguments.

Although the list can help you remember uses with specific verbs, try to keep in the back of your head that underlyingly, the subjunctive expresses a "non-assertion" or "snapshot"-- as I say, essentially the equivalent of structures like "for him to come", "them coming" etc in English, where you don't actually have a normal, conjugated verb.

It's also worth bearing in mind that some uses of the subjunctive are purely structural: nothing really to do with meaning as such (this in particular is why some linguists like myself don't like the association between subjunctive and lists of concepts like "necessity" etc). For example, in French-- as in Romance languages in general-- if a verb clause is the subject of the sentence, then its verb is pretty much automatically in the subjunctive:

Il est très probable qu'elle viendra demain.
It's very likely she'll come tomorrow.
Qu'elle vienne demain est très probable.
Her coming tomorrow is very likely.

N.B. That at its root "subjunctive" meant "subordinate": the similarity with the word "subjunctive" is essentially a coincidence.

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Permalink Reply by Isabelle75Paris on February 19, 2010 at 5:15am

"Tu vais me manquer quand j'aille" is not correct. First "vais" is for "je" (je vais / tu vas / il va...) so if you want to say "you are going to miss me when I will leave" you can say in French "Tu vas me manquer quand je serai parti" or else "Tu vas me manquer quand je m'en irai" but you cannot use "j'aille" here. If you want to say "I have to go to the Boulangerie" for example, then you can use it: "Il faut que j'aille à la Boulangerie". You will never find "j'aille" at the end of a sentence. French conjugaison is very difficult even for French you know so I can understand that you have difficulties with it! Anyway good luck with your work :)

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Permalink Reply by karen sigley on February 19, 2010 at 5:17am

thank you to you all for your replies :)

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 19, 2010 at 9:19am

Also, be careful of the translation of "miss": the subject/object are actually encoded the other way round in French. So:

tu vas me manquer = I'll miss you
je vais te manquer = you'll miss me

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Permalink Reply by Isabelle75Paris on February 19, 2010 at 11:05am

Oh yes you're right so "you are going to miss me when I will leave" would be translated by "Je vais te manquer quand je serai parti" and not "Tu vas me manquer quand je serai parti". Sorry, my mistake :)

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on February 19, 2010 at 3:22pm

tu vas me manquer = I'll miss you
je vais te manquer = you'll miss me
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Please tell me if the following are correct.
Tu me manquer. [ I miss you.]
Je te manquer. [ You miss me.]

Tu me manquais. [ I missed you.]
Je te manquais. [ You missed me.]

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Permalink Reply by Isabelle75Paris on February 19, 2010 at 4:11pm

Yes that's it but don't forget to conjugate the verb because "manquer" is the infinitive form.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on February 19, 2010 at 4:27pm

I have conjugated to the best of my knowledge.
Are all my French sentences fine?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 19, 2010 at 6:58pm

Clue: there's no conjugated verb form in the entire language ending in -r. :-)

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