Timeline for Why is the Romanian tense system so "simple", compared to other Romance languages?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 21, 2019 at 2:58 | comment | added | Lucian | @vectory: ich werd(e), er wird. | |
| Jan 19, 2019 at 6:09 | comment | added | vectory | @Lucian "ich wird" would be rather weird. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 18:47 | comment | added | Lucian | @vectory: The conjugation of werden. | |
| Jan 17, 2019 at 12:48 | comment | added | vectory | @Lucian I don't know a word wird, am I missing something? Adam, the context is not contrived, I'm speaking from experience. I wouldn't call it standard German, though. Nevertheless, the example you gave instead is everyday colloquial usage, for me personally, and then rarely exchangeable for werden. | |
| Jan 17, 2019 at 8:14 | comment | added | Lucian | @vectory: To tell you the truth, I personally believe that what you actually heard was ich wird instead of ich werde, which is explainable through the commonly used ich werd', and you mistook it for an ich will, due to the unavoidable phonetic similarity. | |
| Jan 17, 2019 at 5:58 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | In some contrived context maybe maybe, but willen and werden are just not the same in general. | |
| Jan 17, 2019 at 2:00 | comment | added | vectory | @Lucian Let me tell you, they both mean let me tell you something. The construction is completely transparent and plainly the same, just the detailed word semantics are different, but this comparison won't hinge on detail, will it? | |
| Jan 16, 2019 at 16:34 | history | edited | Adam Bittlingmayer | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 16, 2019 at 7:35 | comment | added | Lucian | @vectory: Ich wil dir mal was sagen and Ich werde dir mal was sagen are two different constructions; the former means I want to tell you something, whereas the latter translates as I will tell you something. | |
| Jan 16, 2019 at 4:36 | vote | accept | iBug | ||
| Jan 7, 2019 at 13:21 | comment | added | vectory | The translation gets the sense across, that's valid. will is not a regular inflection and the marked form is will, noun Wille, Wollen is secondary, and the roots are a blend of PGem *wiljana and *waljana*. Now it's tempting to compare value. An estimate, would particularly well denote near future predictions. And then it reminds more of Ger. werden "become, will", which is linked to Wert "worth, value" (also compare Ger. bekommen "to get"). I can't help but note Ger. wollens sounds like Lt. volens--and vollends: "he wantonly/totally did it". Did I miss the question? | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 12:20 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | German will is an inflected form of wollen, like Du willst, sie wollen, ich wollte. And I think the translation you gave is basically invalid English. But I'm not calling it a tense, I'm just giving it as an example of something in this space that's actually different in German than in English. Whereas Ich will ... sagen and Ich will ... zeigen is, as far as I can tell, the same. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 10:03 | comment | added | vectory | ... inflected or showing other signs of variation, which are missing in ich will dir was sagen. I'm leaning to say the same for morgen will ich zum Friseur "I want to the barber, tomorrow", for sake of the argument, because It's just present tense plus time marker (maybe called futurate). On another note, I see that et- in etwas meant one, so I guess mal in mal was has a similar root in counting (cp. einwas, einmal, etlich ...), so "something" should be an acceptable translation--but that's really off-topic, sorry.. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:48 | comment | added | vectory | You can hardly call that a tense unless it's inflected. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:47 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | It's actually more the other way around, prescriptions borrowed from Romance have influenced written German. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:45 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | In spoken language, the tenses are less than in the written language, that is, whatever early Germanic influence there was in Romania was probably not adding any tenses. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:44 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | Fundamentally different that English is something like Ich will morgen zum Friseur, or Er soll ins Bett, but still seems orthogonal to the question at hand. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:43 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | I don't find it fundamentally different than the English I want to..., other than mal. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:36 | comment | added | vectory | I'm sure there's no correct way to translate "mal", I was just going for the colloquial register. I was looking for the stress on was/what and you are correct that e.g. ich will dir etwas zeigen is just "I will/want to show you something", the intricacy of which was left out on purpose. Your take? | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 9:29 | comment | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | @vectory I'm not so sure, that's not how I would translate that. | |
| Jan 7, 2019 at 8:45 | comment | added | vectory | Compare Ger. ich will "I want" and English will be "futuer be; want". ich will can stil be found in constructions where it's interchangeable with werde "become, will" (e.g. "ich will dir mal was sagen" - "I'm gonna tell you what"). | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 6:50 | history | edited | Adam Bittlingmayer | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 1, 2019 at 18:09 | history | edited | Adam Bittlingmayer | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 1, 2019 at 17:44 | history | answered | Adam Bittlingmayer | CC BY-SA 4.0 |