Groups - ¡Ya me cayó el veinte!*
*Now I get it!
Let me tell you about a couple of "aha" experiences I've had in my Spanish studies --
I kept making the mistake of using the present subjunctive in the "If" clause of "if....then" sentences like:
If I wear the red dress, I will have to change my shoes.
or:
If you see the film, you'll understand why he's such a great director.
No matter how many times I looked at the rule for such sentences (If + present indicative, then + present/future ind), my brain rejected it: Is the statement theoretical, unreal, hypothetical? Then use the subjunctive, dummy! What's more hypothetical then the "I'm just sayin'" conditional? Maybe I'll wear the red dress, maybe I won't. Maybe you'll see the film, maybe you won't. I'm just sayin'.
...Until my Guatemalan teacher looked me in the eye and said:
No se permite el presente del subjuntivo en una claúsula de 'si'. You can't use the present subjuntive in a 'si' clause. Period. You just can't.
The descriptions and analyses of the use of the subjunctive are all after-the-fact attempts to understand what is actually happening in the language and in the minds of the native speaker who chooses the indicative or subjunctive in a particular locution. They help, no doubt about it. But when there's an apparent conflict between the two, natural language always trumps rules.
Second example --
If she had found the book, she would have bought it.
Si hubiera encontrado el libro, lo habría comprado.
In this contrary-to-fact conditional sentence, the Spanish rule is: If + past perfect subjunctive, then + conditional perfect/past perfect subjunctive.
Ok, so I knew this rule but I still found myself saying or writing, "Si había encontrado" (the pluperfect indicative: If she had found...) because I was translating an English phrase, not speaking a Spanish sentence. Slippery slope, guys.
Now these may seem like very obvious points to many of you, but these insights were really helpful to me.
in the Group the deep end .
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Thanks alot for this, I found it really helpful too. I never really thought about sentence structures such as these in depth before.
That is very illuminating: no se permite el presente del subjunctivo en una clausula de "si"
Gracias!
I am still getting to grips with si clauses and strangely,i have the oposite problem. i have ubieraitis and am unsure as to when i can dispense with the whole "if i were to have " and just say if i had.
Excuse me if you all already know this, but I would like to add one thing to the discussion. When using the if (si) clause, if you are talking about something that is reasonable likely to occur, you use the present indicative and the future tense.
“si voy a la tienda, compraré leche” – “if I go to the store, I will by milk”.
cheers steve, recently i ran into problems trying to translate another film quote
"If you build it they will come."
so given that the quote is a statement of belief i guess it would simply be
si lo construyes, ellos vendrán
and not
si lo construyeras, ellos vendrán
so is it that, if you are confident enough about the outcome not to need the conditional then you dont need the imperfect subjunctive?
Donperigo
If you say “si lo construyes, ellos vendrán” with “construer” in the indicative instead of the imperfect subjunctive, you believe that there is a reasonable likelihood that the person you are talking to will build it, not that if he builds it they will come.
I could say “si yo fuera tú no lo comeré”. I am 100% certain that if I were you, I would not eat it, what is hypothetical or in this case contrary to fact is me being you.
Of course at times likelihood is subjective.
anna8, you said:
The thing about this is that English "If she had found" is the English pluperfect subjunctive, but most people don't realize it because it's looks exactly the same as the indicative.
The way you tell the difference in English (and in Spanish!) between pluperfect indicative and subjunctive is to ask if the action actually happened. The imperfect indicative is used to describe what the situation actually was in the past, while speakers use the subjunctive to *avoid* saying that the action happened.
So if I use the indicative and say:
No me lo habían entregado. They hadn't returned it to me.
... I'm talking about a situation that actually happened.
However, if I say...
Si me lo hubieran entregado... If you had returned it to me...
...I'm talking about a situtation that did not actually happen.
A lot of synchronic analyses will say that the English subjunctive form is dying out or that people are "losing" the subjunctive, but the truth is that the function of the subjunctive is still there. We all still need to talk about both actual and hypothetical situations.
Of course you're right JP. Functionally, sticking an "if" in front of a pluperfect form turns it into a subjunctive:
I had returned it (real) vs If I had returned it (unreal).
The subjunctive in English is more obvious, if somewhat stilted, if expressed as: Had I returned it...
Instead of saying above that "I was translating an English phrase and not speaking in a Spanish sentence" it would have been more accurate to say I was translating "word for word" rather than conceptually or formally. And the words that buy you a subjunctive in English don't always buy you one in Spanish.
stevestrv
entonces construyeras?
but that seems to me to change the meaning. Now it seems to me that in the origional meaning of "go on, build it and they will come." the if is superfluous .
entonces construyalo y ellos vendrá
¿el subjuntivo, quien lo necesita?
donperigo
This is how I see I, I am open to correction.
a) Constrúyelo (command) y vendrán – Build it (command) and they will come.
b) si lo construyas (present indicative) vendrán – if you build it (and there is a reasonable change that you will) they will come.
c) Si lo construyeras (imperfect subjunctive) vendrían – If you were to build it (and I it is very unlikely to impossible that you will build it) they would come
I think, as you said, that in the movie when they say “build it and they will come” there is an implied if which would match “b”. I do not know if in Spanish you can do the same and have an implied “si”.
stevestrv: una corrección pequeña: presente de indicativo de "construir" es "construyes" (como tú sabes). :) a small correction: present tense indicative of "construir" is "construyes" (as you know).
martinillo
Good call thanks.