Complicated subjunctive question? or is it simpler than I think?

[Kelly]

If I should be the only one in whom you have faith, I would love you with all my might.

(I know, it's flowery-poetic gooey. But it helps me ask the question.) In other words, If I were able to find a way to become that person, etc.

In English, this looks like subjunctive, subjunctive, conditional. But in French I feel like I'm supposed to go with the imperfect after si, as in:

——Si j'étais la seule en qui tu aies foi, je t'aimerais à tour de bras.

If I were the only one, etc. To me this implies a lot more certainty than the sentence warrants. Now I suppose it could be reworded to "If I could be..." and introduce pouvoir (Si je pouvais être...), but that's getting awfully complicated.

What I want to know is, can the sentence be written as "Si je sois la seule en qui tu aies foi..." or is subjunctive after si always, always, a no-no?

I always think I understand the subjunctive in French, only to discover I'm able to confuse myself with situations like this.

Merci d'avance!

[Erwan]

It's impossible to write "Si je sois". The subjonctive is only used with the words "que" or "qui".

Concerning the first part of you phrase, what do you think of "Si je devais être..."?

"à tour de bras" sounds a bit weird here. There is a notion of physical strength behind this expression. May be "de tout mon coeur/être/corps" sounds better

[Kelly]

It's impossible to write "Si je sois". The subjonctive is only used with the words "que" or "qui".

Thanks, that's what I thought. Simpler than I think—the answer's just No.   :)  This is why I get confused, I look for exceptions to the rules where there aren't any. I appreciate your help!

[Neil Coffey]

This is quite a complex area with little consensus. But:

(a) it confuses the issue to think of "should" in English as constituting a "subjunctive"; I would actually go as far as saying that English simply does not have subjunctive forms;

(b) in any case, even among languages that squarely do have subjunctive forms (e.g. French, Spanish and Italian), the precise circumstances in which those languages use the subjunctive or not varies across languages. You can't infer that just because language X uses a subjunctive form in a particular case, language Y automatically must.

I would strongly recommend just learning about what the subjunctive is from the point of view of French, and when it is used in French, and not worrying too much about trying to spuriously label things in English as being "subjunctive". If you define "subjunctive" in terms of e.g. the difference between "sois" vs "suis" in French, it is pretty clear that English Has No Such Thing, so you are just asking to confuse yourself by taking this line.

[Neil Coffey]

P.S. If you DO want to draw a parallel with English, subjunctive forms are much more equivalent to English structures such as "him doing the washing up", "for him to come back" etc (structures that "snapshot an imagined situation" without actually saying that it did, didn't, will etc take place), versus "he did the washing up", "he is coming back" etc.

This may also help: http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/grammar/subjunctive_what_is.shtml

[Adidas]

Could you not use 'Soit que j'etais la seule...?

[Erwan]

If you use "Soit" by this way  that means you make a supposition. Then you get this kind of structure "Soit...soit...". I don't think this is what Kelly wants.

Beginning your sentence with "Soit que" is not grammaticaly correct. If you want to use it you need a proposition first like "Cela signifie soit que... soit que..." (It means that... or that...)

[Adidas]

Thanks Erwan. You're right. I was thinking  more on the lines of

<wouldst that I were alone>, which of course is not what was intended in the translation.

More difficult than I thought at first.... 

 

[stu harris]

Neil, I'll give you an English subjunctive which is grammatically correct although it's so formal that it might raise a smirk today:

I'd like a south-facing room ,were that to be available.

But surely, even the perfectly vernacular I'd do it right now if I were you is a subjunctive form??

[Neil Coffey]

Stu -- I would take the view that it's not. I would say that in the case of e.g. "if I were...", "were it..." etc -- effectively all the places where you have "were" as a third person singular in English -- these are effectively just "fixed expressions" of one sort or another.

Or put another way: I think it makes no sense to propose the existence of an entire verbal paradigm on the basis of a form used fairly idiosynchratically and for a single verb in the whole language. Other aspects of verbal syntax and morphology (be it the existence of past tense forms, the addition of a suffix in the third person singular of the present tense etc) simply don't work like that.

Or put another way: saying that English has subjunctives on the basis of "if I were" (etc) is a bit like saying that English adjectives have weak forms ending in -en on the basis of examples such as "a sunken armchair" or "a golden goose". It's proposing a paradigm on the basis of a few rare, idiosynchratically used examples. That just makes no sense.