subjuncitve

[karen sigley]

Hello all

i am new here and i joined because i would really appreciate some help in tackling the subjunctive!!!

I have been studying french for almost 4 years now and for the last 2 of those i have been taking courses with the Open University which i am really enjoying. I am hoping to live and work in France once i complete a degree in the language.

Anyway as i said i struggle with the subjunctive because i just don't understand when i am suppossed to use it???? I attempted a use at it the other day when talking to a friend i said "Tu vais me manquer quand j'aille" but i really don't know if it was suitable to use it in this sentance?!?!?!

So if anyone can help me with it i would be completely grateful.

 

Thanks in advance for any help i can get

[Neil Coffey]

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.

[karen sigley]

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

[Crack1]

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.

[Neil Coffey]

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.

[Isabelle75Paris]

"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 :)

[karen sigley]

thank you to you all for your replies :)

[Neil Coffey]

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

[Isabelle75Paris]

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 :)

[Crack1]

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

[Isabelle75Paris]

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

[Crack1]

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

[Neil Coffey]

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