Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
Explanation of how to express the ‘future tense’ in Swedish, as requested by Verily Baroque. 🙂
In the strict sense, the Swedish language has only two tenses, namely the present and the past. All other types of time references that can be expressed by verbs have to be formed through a verb construction containing one finite verb (in the present or past tense) and one or more non-finite verbs. For example, the pluperfect is expressed by using the auxiliary verb hade followed by a verb in the supine (non-finite) form (hade jobbat = had worked). This is, of course, very similar to how you would express the pluperfect in English.
In order to express events that are to take place in the future, we have a few different options depending on what exactly is to be expressed.
The most basic ‘future tense’ construction is:
ska + verb in the infinitive
Example: ska äta = will eat
The verb ska is technically in the present tense. The longer, more formal form is skall, i.e. it’s similar to the English shall, but in context could be more accurately translated as will. Thus, this construction is used to express what will happen, or what someone will do.
Another common ‘future tense’ construction is:
kommer att + verb in the infinitive
Example: det kommer att regna = it will rain
By itself, kommer att could be most closely translated as is/are going to. This construction is used to express what is going to happen, or what someone is going to do. What exactly is the difference between what will happen and what is going to happen, one might ask. I’ll get back to my thoughts on this after I outline one more crucial way of expressing the ‘future tense’.
It is very common to express what will transpire in the future by simply using a verb in the present tense, along with some sort of expression for time (in the future).
Example: Jag åker hem imorgon. = I’m going home tomorrow.
Now we have three different ways of expressing essentially the same thing. The three sentences below are all about a girl who is starting school tomorrow:
Hon ska börja i skolan imorgon. Hon kommer att börja i skolan imorgon. Hon börjar i skolan imorgon.
The difference between these three options is difficult to pinpoint, and sometimes/often two or three of these will be interchangeable. The difference is in how avoidable the future event is, how much the future event can be influenced, or whether it has been decided (by someone) that the event will happen. In other words, we’re talking about various degrees of certainty that the event will indeed happen.
The third construction (verb in present tense + time expression) signals the highest level of certainty.
Example:
?Det snöar imorgon.
The sentence above would mean that it will be snowing tomorrow, but this particular construction signals a borderline impossible certainty in the statement that it will actually snow. Tomorrow’s predicted weather events are presumably not inevitable facts, which is why I put a ? in front of this example sentence.
It’s common for second language learners to latch onto one of these ‘future tense’ options (ska or kommer att) and use only that construction every time, which will come off as repetitive to a native speaker. While it’s important to vary between the different strategies, it’s also necessary to have a feel for the subtle differences in meaning, and to apply them only where permitted by the context.
Some more examples: We’re going swimming this afternoon. Vi åker och badar i eftermiddag. Vi ska åka och bada i eftermiddag.
?Vi kommer att åka och bada i eftermiddag.
While all these options are grammatically correct, the last one is mildly strange. It suggests that the event is inevitable, out of the speaker’s control. It could possibly be uttered by a child who has no say in their parents’ plans for the afternoon.
There are also other, more limited ways of talking about the future. One common construction is:
tänker + verb in the infinitive
Example: Jag tänker inte gå ut idag. = I’m not going out today.
In this construction, tänker (literally the present tense of to think) signals what someone intends to do, or in this case what they intend not to do. Since it’s dependent on intent, this option cannot be used to express what will happen in a passive sense.
And that’s really all there’s to it. Of course, you can also talk about time in a more complicated sense, such as what was expected to happen in the future from the point of view of some time in the past. Generally, these complex verb structures are expressed very similarly to how one would do it in English, keeping in mind the grammar I’ve discussed in this post.
Examples:
Hon tänkte köpa en ny telefon. = She was meaning to buy a new telephone. De skulle träffas nästa onsdag. = They were going to see each other the following Wednesday.
(The word skulle is simply the past tense of ska.)
Hope that helped! 🙂
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
Of course, the only Finnish sentence that all Swedes know and understand is “ei saa peittää” – a phrase found on basically all radiators, meaning roughly “Don’t cover a hot radiator with a blanket, you fucking idiot. You’ll start a fire.”
The Swedish translation says “do not cover”, but I assume that’s just the nicer, more Sweden compatible way of saying it?
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
Oops, sorry for messing up the italics tags at the end of that grammar post. I ran out of editing time before I could find where it went wrong. :/
bluecat
8 years ago
@ Bina – it’s the only fictional utopia I’ve ever thought I might actually like to live in.
@ IP that is absolutely fascinating, thank you.
It seems Swedish has what some call “aspect” – as English does – where the grammatical construction reflects not only the time of the action in the verb but also how we feel about it.
I wonder whether we got it from you, being as how English is bit of a smorgasbord of languages?
As you say, adult learners of English often latch onto one option (it’s usually “will” for the future) and over use it, which makes them sometimes come across as unduly dictatorial, especially when there are also problems with the question form and with intonation – the difference in feeling between “You will come tomorrow” and “Are you coming tomorrow?”, for instance.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@bluecat
The only real aspectual distinction in Swedish grammar is that between the perfect and the pluperfect. Other aspectual information can be contained in specific expressions or phrasal verbs, but in general aspect isn’t commonly considered in Swedish.
I would say the progressive aspect in English is more clear and commonly used than anything we have in Swedish, other than the perfect/pluperfect distinction which of course is present in English as well.
The whole concept of aspect can be very difficult to grasp for someone who speaks only or mostly Swedish. For myself, I only started to fully understand what aspect means when coming across the particles 了 and 过 in Chinese.
Verily Baroque
8 years ago
@IP
You are amazing. Just amazing. And so is your explanation.
If I may ask additional questions:
Why is “verb in present tense + time expression” signaling the most certainty/inevitability when talking about weather but “kommer att + verb in the infinitive + time expression” signaling more inevitability when talking about a person doing something?
Is this strictly tied to the context and determined on a case-by-case basis (which is always utterly delightful in grammar) or can some kind of absolute rule be drawn from this?
And that’s really all there’s to it.
…I hope you are being sarcastic? 🙂 Your system is complex.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@Verily Baroque
You are amazing. Just amazing. And so is your explanation.
Aww. 🙂 Thank you. So are you.
Thanks for your questions! They make me suspect I wasn’t entirely crystal clear in certain parts of my explanation and examples, so I greatly appreciate them. 🙂 I’ll try to clarify.
Out of the three main options I listed, the subtle differences I mentioned are basically universal and not tied to the specific contexts entailed by the examples I gave. Those were just meant to be typical examples to illustrate these differences. In summary:
ska + verb in the infinitive – signals determination/intent kommer att + verb in the infinitive – signals inevitability/out of control
verb in the present tense + time expression – signals the highest level of certainty
If the third option is applied to something which is clearly within the control of the speaker, it can be taken to mean that the speaker is very determined to make sure this will happen, and nothing can stop them.
But I want to reiterate that these differences are subtle, and there are often more than one perfectly acceptable option. I think there are clear differences, but I wouldn’t call them absolute rules.
I hope you are being sarcastic?
Haha. I actually wasn’t being sarcastic. I think it seems more complex than it is, because I went into detail trying to explain these subtle differences. Basically there are three main ways of expressing ‘future tense’, and while not interchangeable they’re often all acceptable and you would very rarely be misunderstood regardless of which one you choose in any given context.
Monzach
8 years ago
@Imaginary Petal
Your grammar and other language posts reminded me of a factoid I heard during my university days:
Apparently there was a poll in the 1990s among foreign exchange students at the University of Helsinki regarding their perceptions of the Finnish language. One of the questions asked was about the most beautiful sentence in Finnish, specifically the sentence which sounded the most beautiful to people. Interestingly enough, the overall winner was a phrase that’s quite common in the Finnish weather forecasts – alavilla mailla hallan vaara (danger of frost in low-lying areas). 🙂
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@Monzach
Haha, that’s an awesome sentence. I’ve often defended the Finnish language when other Swedes seem to view it as “ugly”. Something about the intonation makes it sound very soothing to me.
I recall a short TV segment from way back, where a reporter asked immigrants learning Swedish about which Swedish word is the most beautiful. I remember one thing that always stuck with me, one of them answered “Selma”, which is of course not a word-word, but a name presumably associated with the Nobel prize winning author Selma Lagerlöf.
Verily Baroque
8 years ago
@IP
Heh, that’s a very good translation for “Ei saa peittää”. The actual translation is a somewhat stern “You are not allowed to cover this” – the sentence is in passive and while the “you” in my translation is meant to be the general you and not “you over there specifically, yeah I’m talking about YOU”, it still sounds more aggressive in English than it does in Finnish. Maybe “Covering this is not allowed” would be better?
ei = not, no
saa = singular third person form for saada = to be allowed
peittää = to cover (also the same as the verb’s third person form in this case)
If you needed to add an object to that sentence, it would actually be in front of it (not common in Finnish) and in accusative (extremely common in Finnish).
Patteria ei saa peittää. = You are not allowed to cover the radiator.
Do not cover. = Älä peitä.
where
älä = don’t
peitä = the form of peittää you use with either älä or ei (this is incidentally also identical to the imperative -> Peitä! = Cover it!).
If you allow me a short extra paragraph of language geekery, then let me mention that explicit personal pronouns (except for the singular and plural third persons) are optional in most cases and the word ei (=no, not) changes cases based on who is (or actually isn’t) doing something.
Minä luen. = Luen. = I read / am reading / will read.
Minä en lue. = En lue. = I don’t read / am not reading / won’t read.
Te huomasitte minut. = Huomasitte minut. = You (plural) noticed me.
Te ette huomanneet minua. = Ette huomanneet minua. = You (plural) didn’t notice me.
Te ette huomannut minua. = Ette huomannut minua. = You (singular formal) didn’t notice me. (Skiriki mentioned the singular formal second person pronoun two pages ago, so here’s an example. This is pretty close to German’s Sie – siezen practice and I know at least Italian and French have something similar.)
The difference is that in most cases writing the singular first person pronoun (i.e. I) will make you seem egotistical since it needlessly emphasizes that it is you who is doing something. It can be insulting with other pronouns, too:
Osaatko saksaa? = Do you speak German?
Osaatko sinä saksaa? = Wait what, YOU speak German??? ::dies laughing::
… to exaggerate a bit, but I’m sure you get the point.
Monzach
8 years ago
@Imaginary Petal
One of the lecturers whose course I took at university told us a funny story about another beautiful sentence in Finnish:
Basically, apparently the most beautiful sentence in Finnish is “Saari, saari, heinäsaaren morsian” (An island, an island, the bride of the hay island). Naturally the Swedes thought that this was a very lovely phrase and decided to translate it into Swedish. The result of which is of course: “Ö, ö, höös mö”. 😛
I apologize for making fun of your language, oh great and powerful (former) overlords in the West! :O
Verily Baroque
8 years ago
@IP
Thank you for the additional explanation! Your original explanation was excellent, by the way: I just have some baggage in the form of a previous Swedish teacher insisting that the different future tenses are rarely if ever interchangeable. Yet I swear I haven’t noticed much more than subtle differences like you mentioned in the ways native speakers use them (although, again, there no doubt are regional differences which muddies the waters a bit).
I admit one of the reasons I wished for this specific subject was to get a native speaker’s perspective on how much the use of the different future tenses overlaps and how much I should avoid talking about the future with Swedes. 🙂 You have no idea how grateful I am for your patience in explaining it.
guest
8 years ago
Maybe because Selma (my great-grandmother’s name) sounds like salaam.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@VB
When working with language teachers, I’ve noticed it’s a common problem that teachers come to a conclusion about how grammar works, and then they confirm that view to themselves by coming up with a few examples which fit with their conclusion. There are often examples to be found which would contradict their conclusions, but why keep looking when you’ve already reached your conclusion. I always err on the side of ‘language is complex’, and refrain from stating any hard rules unless I can be absolutely certain.
Also, thanks for your Finnish grammar lesson. 🙂 I’ll try to read it more carefully later, when I have more time.
@Monzach
Classic! :p
Skiriki
8 years ago
IP:
The Swedish translation says “do not cover”, but I assume that’s just the nicer, more Sweden compatible way of saying it?
Well, there’s no good way to make warnings pretty and not-dire not-doom-is-coming-your-way in Finnish… so. 😀
(I slightly kid, but it is often something that requires more words and we know how long Finnish words can grow, so this blunt approach is usually the best.)
I mean, we don’t even have “please” in Finnish! “Kiitos” is not a suitable substitute for that! Usually, when we’d say something like “please hand over that thingamagic”, we use our conditional form instead; this is the polite form for us.
“Voisitko antaa tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Would you hand over that thingamagic to me?”
Because otherwise, you’re going to sound really smarmy (like 50% Shrekeli smary) if you deploy “kiitos” nillywilly like it doesn’t mean a thing; if we really need to work on “please” substitute, we’ve been going down this route:
“Olisitko ystävällinen ja antaisit tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Would you please be kind and hand over that thingamagic to me?”
Of course, these days, Finglish (Finnish + English) to rescue! “Pliis” (a Finglish form of spoken “please”, obv) is something you can heard tucked after or before conditional-form request.
“Pliis antaisitko tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Antaisitko tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle pliis?”
And the first Swedish word after obvious ones (ja, nej, tack, 1-10) is “omskakas”. “Shake”, often seen in juice and milk boxes.
Which IMHO is an inherently funny word, just like “masticate” is an inherently funny word in English.
Alan Robertshaw
8 years ago
@ imaginary petal et al
That has all been fascinating; thank you!
It’s actually helped me with my English too. It’s funny, when you learn a foreign language teachers launch into stuff about participles and perfect/imperfect, but no one has ever first explained what that means in your original language (which presumably you pick up intuitively by mimicry). I still don’t really know what all those phrases mean, but your teaching has helped me at least start.
Is this something you do professionally? You’re very good at it. And I tell you, when I finally get my time machine working necessitating language to cope with ontological paradoxes and events which may or may not have happened once/yet, you are going to be my go-to guy (or whichever appellation you prefer) for working out the new syntax.
(First trip will be to save that apatosaurus so it doesn’t get discovered as a fossil and knock brontosaurus of its rightful perch)
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
I just have to say I’m enjoying this merry meeting very much! I took a call from BF Atomica, fell asleep and only now got to catch up with this.
I’ll add a Turku reinforcement on my behalf, and any Mammotheers will be offered beverages of choice and have a free access to my cupboards and fridge. Just remember that around these regions saying ‘no’ means yes, but not in the creepy Roosh way, only when offered things to eat or drink. So you will leave the establishment well nourished whether you like it or not!
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@Skiriki
Hah, Finglish! My cat’s name is Fingie, and now I’m feeling highly compelled to refer to his meowing as Finglish.
I have to say the word “omskakas” seems rare to me. It’s funny how some words and phrases can be overused in certain contexts, making them seem way more common than they really are in the language.
@Alan
Thanks! I’ve worked professionally with adult second language learners for a few years in the past, but now I do it as a volunteer. I don’t have the relevant education in order to teach as a career, but we don’t have enough teachers so it’s possible to find work sometimes anyway.
I agree with what you say about launching into details of grammar. This strategy can work with college educated people who have already spent time thinking about how their language works, and are aware of the terminology of grammar. However, it is utterly pointless trying to discuss reflexive pronouns with, let’s say, a 50 year old Afghan woman who has never been able to read even in her native language.
For most people it’s sufficient to learn grammar terms as ‘headlines’ for a topic, for example understanding that ‘tense’ means we’re talking about time, or that ‘verbs’ means we’re talking about things we do or things that happen. Frankly, the average person probably couldn’t tell you what a participle actually is, so why should second language learners be bothered with it? What’s important is knowing how to use the language – not knowing how to talk about language.
Skiriki
8 years ago
@IP: Yeah, but if you drink juice or surmjölk or stuff like that, you’re so gonna see it everywhere and therefore it totally leaps to my mind. 😀
This is awesome. My young lady and I have been language-geeking over this thread whilst on the bus.
A. Noyd
8 years ago
Technically, tense indicates an event or state’s location in time or “when” something happens (past, present, future) whereas aspect indicates behavior at that time or “how” something happens (continuously, periodically, completely, etc). Modality indicates things like likelihood (or necessity, appropriateness, etc). But most people don’t bother to get specific with the categories if the language in question doesn’t have clear lines of separation built in. (English and Swedish don’t. Chinese and Japanese do.)
And even if you manage to iron things out, you can still have different rules for stative and dynamic verbs throwing fuckery into everything.
Arctic Ape
8 years ago
bluecat:
The only bit of Finnish I know is kuusi palaa, which I managed to get a found poem from the various translations of. I get the impression a lot of tacit contextual understanding must be needed – but that’s a position based on pure ignorance.
For what it’s worth, when I started learning English, I thought some multiple-meaning words like “match” were curious, while taking for granted that my native Finnish had its own multiple-meaning words.
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
Translating Finnish idioms into English is also always fun. My friend’s Scottish boyfriend had no idea what my friend meant when she said she was running around with her hair in a pipe. Tukka putkella = Your hair in the form of a pipe (behind your head) rather than relaxed, used as an expression when someone is doing stuff very fast.
Omskakas 😀
kupo
8 years ago
What’s important is knowing how to use the language – not knowing how to talk about language.
I agree with you to a point. I took Japanese for a few years through an immersion class and it started to get difficult in the more advanced classes when we couldn’t talk about grammar. We had to find outside texts to learn more about the grammar rules for some of it to make sense.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@kupo
You can talk about grammar without talking about grammar, if that makes sense.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Explanation of how to express the ‘future tense’ in Swedish, as requested by Verily Baroque. 🙂
In the strict sense, the Swedish language has only two tenses, namely the present and the past. All other types of time references that can be expressed by verbs have to be formed through a verb construction containing one finite verb (in the present or past tense) and one or more non-finite verbs. For example, the pluperfect is expressed by using the auxiliary verb hade followed by a verb in the supine (non-finite) form (hade jobbat = had worked). This is, of course, very similar to how you would express the pluperfect in English.
In order to express events that are to take place in the future, we have a few different options depending on what exactly is to be expressed.
The most basic ‘future tense’ construction is:
ska + verb in the infinitive
Example: ska äta = will eat
The verb ska is technically in the present tense. The longer, more formal form is skall, i.e. it’s similar to the English shall, but in context could be more accurately translated as will. Thus, this construction is used to express what will happen, or what someone will do.
Another common ‘future tense’ construction is:
kommer att + verb in the infinitive
Example: det kommer att regna = it will rain
By itself, kommer att could be most closely translated as is/are going to. This construction is used to express what is going to happen, or what someone is going to do. What exactly is the difference between what will happen and what is going to happen, one might ask. I’ll get back to my thoughts on this after I outline one more crucial way of expressing the ‘future tense’.
It is very common to express what will transpire in the future by simply using a verb in the present tense, along with some sort of expression for time (in the future).
Example: Jag åker hem imorgon. = I’m going home tomorrow.
Now we have three different ways of expressing essentially the same thing. The three sentences below are all about a girl who is starting school tomorrow:
Hon ska börja i skolan imorgon.
Hon kommer att börja i skolan imorgon.
Hon börjar i skolan imorgon.
The difference between these three options is difficult to pinpoint, and sometimes/often two or three of these will be interchangeable. The difference is in how avoidable the future event is, how much the future event can be influenced, or whether it has been decided (by someone) that the event will happen. In other words, we’re talking about various degrees of certainty that the event will indeed happen.
The third construction (verb in present tense + time expression) signals the highest level of certainty.
Example:
?Det snöar imorgon.
The sentence above would mean that it will be snowing tomorrow, but this particular construction signals a borderline impossible certainty in the statement that it will actually snow. Tomorrow’s predicted weather events are presumably not inevitable facts, which is why I put a ? in front of this example sentence.
It’s common for second language learners to latch onto one of these ‘future tense’ options (ska or kommer att) and use only that construction every time, which will come off as repetitive to a native speaker. While it’s important to vary between the different strategies, it’s also necessary to have a feel for the subtle differences in meaning, and to apply them only where permitted by the context.
Some more examples:
We’re going swimming this afternoon.
Vi åker och badar i eftermiddag.
Vi ska åka och bada i eftermiddag.
?Vi kommer att åka och bada i eftermiddag.
While all these options are grammatically correct, the last one is mildly strange. It suggests that the event is inevitable, out of the speaker’s control. It could possibly be uttered by a child who has no say in their parents’ plans for the afternoon.
There are also other, more limited ways of talking about the future. One common construction is:
tänker + verb in the infinitive
Example: Jag tänker inte gå ut idag. = I’m not going out today.
In this construction, tänker (literally the present tense of to think) signals what someone intends to do, or in this case what they intend not to do. Since it’s dependent on intent, this option cannot be used to express what will happen in a passive sense.
And that’s really all there’s to it. Of course, you can also talk about time in a more complicated sense, such as what was expected to happen in the future from the point of view of some time in the past. Generally, these complex verb structures are expressed very similarly to how one would do it in English, keeping in mind the grammar I’ve discussed in this post.
Examples:
Hon tänkte köpa en ny telefon. = She was meaning to buy a new telephone.
De skulle träffas nästa onsdag. = They were going to see each other the following Wednesday.
(The word skulle is simply the past tense of ska.)
Hope that helped! 🙂
Of course, the only Finnish sentence that all Swedes know and understand is “ei saa peittää” – a phrase found on basically all radiators, meaning roughly “Don’t cover a hot radiator with a blanket, you fucking idiot. You’ll start a fire.”
The Swedish translation says “do not cover”, but I assume that’s just the nicer, more Sweden compatible way of saying it?
Oops, sorry for messing up the italics tags at the end of that grammar post. I ran out of editing time before I could find where it went wrong. :/
@ Bina – it’s the only fictional utopia I’ve ever thought I might actually like to live in.
@ IP that is absolutely fascinating, thank you.
It seems Swedish has what some call “aspect” – as English does – where the grammatical construction reflects not only the time of the action in the verb but also how we feel about it.
I wonder whether we got it from you, being as how English is bit of a smorgasbord of languages?
As you say, adult learners of English often latch onto one option (it’s usually “will” for the future) and over use it, which makes them sometimes come across as unduly dictatorial, especially when there are also problems with the question form and with intonation – the difference in feeling between “You will come tomorrow” and “Are you coming tomorrow?”, for instance.
@bluecat
The only real aspectual distinction in Swedish grammar is that between the perfect and the pluperfect. Other aspectual information can be contained in specific expressions or phrasal verbs, but in general aspect isn’t commonly considered in Swedish.
I would say the progressive aspect in English is more clear and commonly used than anything we have in Swedish, other than the perfect/pluperfect distinction which of course is present in English as well.
The whole concept of aspect can be very difficult to grasp for someone who speaks only or mostly Swedish. For myself, I only started to fully understand what aspect means when coming across the particles 了 and 过 in Chinese.
@IP
You are amazing. Just amazing. And so is your explanation.
If I may ask additional questions:
Why is “verb in present tense + time expression” signaling the most certainty/inevitability when talking about weather but “kommer att + verb in the infinitive + time expression” signaling more inevitability when talking about a person doing something?
Is this strictly tied to the context and determined on a case-by-case basis (which is always utterly delightful in grammar) or can some kind of absolute rule be drawn from this?
…I hope you are being sarcastic? 🙂 Your system is complex.
@Verily Baroque
Aww. 🙂 Thank you. So are you.
Thanks for your questions! They make me suspect I wasn’t entirely crystal clear in certain parts of my explanation and examples, so I greatly appreciate them. 🙂 I’ll try to clarify.
Out of the three main options I listed, the subtle differences I mentioned are basically universal and not tied to the specific contexts entailed by the examples I gave. Those were just meant to be typical examples to illustrate these differences. In summary:
ska + verb in the infinitive – signals determination/intent
kommer att + verb in the infinitive – signals inevitability/out of control
verb in the present tense + time expression – signals the highest level of certainty
If the third option is applied to something which is clearly within the control of the speaker, it can be taken to mean that the speaker is very determined to make sure this will happen, and nothing can stop them.
But I want to reiterate that these differences are subtle, and there are often more than one perfectly acceptable option. I think there are clear differences, but I wouldn’t call them absolute rules.
Haha. I actually wasn’t being sarcastic. I think it seems more complex than it is, because I went into detail trying to explain these subtle differences. Basically there are three main ways of expressing ‘future tense’, and while not interchangeable they’re often all acceptable and you would very rarely be misunderstood regardless of which one you choose in any given context.
@Imaginary Petal
Your grammar and other language posts reminded me of a factoid I heard during my university days:
Apparently there was a poll in the 1990s among foreign exchange students at the University of Helsinki regarding their perceptions of the Finnish language. One of the questions asked was about the most beautiful sentence in Finnish, specifically the sentence which sounded the most beautiful to people. Interestingly enough, the overall winner was a phrase that’s quite common in the Finnish weather forecasts – alavilla mailla hallan vaara (danger of frost in low-lying areas). 🙂
@Monzach
Haha, that’s an awesome sentence. I’ve often defended the Finnish language when other Swedes seem to view it as “ugly”. Something about the intonation makes it sound very soothing to me.
I recall a short TV segment from way back, where a reporter asked immigrants learning Swedish about which Swedish word is the most beautiful. I remember one thing that always stuck with me, one of them answered “Selma”, which is of course not a word-word, but a name presumably associated with the Nobel prize winning author Selma Lagerlöf.
@IP
Heh, that’s a very good translation for “Ei saa peittää”. The actual translation is a somewhat stern “You are not allowed to cover this” – the sentence is in passive and while the “you” in my translation is meant to be the general you and not “you over there specifically, yeah I’m talking about YOU”, it still sounds more aggressive in English than it does in Finnish. Maybe “Covering this is not allowed” would be better?
ei = not, no
saa = singular third person form for saada = to be allowed
peittää = to cover (also the same as the verb’s third person form in this case)
If you needed to add an object to that sentence, it would actually be in front of it (not common in Finnish) and in accusative (extremely common in Finnish).
Patteria ei saa peittää. = You are not allowed to cover the radiator.
Do not cover. = Älä peitä.
where
älä = don’t
peitä = the form of peittää you use with either älä or ei (this is incidentally also identical to the imperative -> Peitä! = Cover it!).
If you allow me a short extra paragraph of language geekery, then let me mention that explicit personal pronouns (except for the singular and plural third persons) are optional in most cases and the word ei (=no, not) changes cases based on who is (or actually isn’t) doing something.
Minä luen. = Luen. = I read / am reading / will read.
Minä en lue. = En lue. = I don’t read / am not reading / won’t read.
Te huomasitte minut. = Huomasitte minut. = You (plural) noticed me.
Te ette huomanneet minua. = Ette huomanneet minua. = You (plural) didn’t notice me.
Te ette huomannut minua. = Ette huomannut minua. = You (singular formal) didn’t notice me. (Skiriki mentioned the singular formal second person pronoun two pages ago, so here’s an example. This is pretty close to German’s Sie – siezen practice and I know at least Italian and French have something similar.)
The difference is that in most cases writing the singular first person pronoun (i.e. I) will make you seem egotistical since it needlessly emphasizes that it is you who is doing something. It can be insulting with other pronouns, too:
Osaatko saksaa? = Do you speak German?
Osaatko sinä saksaa? = Wait what, YOU speak German??? ::dies laughing::
… to exaggerate a bit, but I’m sure you get the point.
@Imaginary Petal
One of the lecturers whose course I took at university told us a funny story about another beautiful sentence in Finnish:
Basically, apparently the most beautiful sentence in Finnish is “Saari, saari, heinäsaaren morsian” (An island, an island, the bride of the hay island). Naturally the Swedes thought that this was a very lovely phrase and decided to translate it into Swedish. The result of which is of course: “Ö, ö, höös mö”. 😛
I apologize for making fun of your language, oh great and powerful (former) overlords in the West! :O
@IP
Thank you for the additional explanation! Your original explanation was excellent, by the way: I just have some baggage in the form of a previous Swedish teacher insisting that the different future tenses are rarely if ever interchangeable. Yet I swear I haven’t noticed much more than subtle differences like you mentioned in the ways native speakers use them (although, again, there no doubt are regional differences which muddies the waters a bit).
I admit one of the reasons I wished for this specific subject was to get a native speaker’s perspective on how much the use of the different future tenses overlaps and how much I should avoid talking about the future with Swedes. 🙂 You have no idea how grateful I am for your patience in explaining it.
Maybe because Selma (my great-grandmother’s name) sounds like salaam.
@VB
When working with language teachers, I’ve noticed it’s a common problem that teachers come to a conclusion about how grammar works, and then they confirm that view to themselves by coming up with a few examples which fit with their conclusion. There are often examples to be found which would contradict their conclusions, but why keep looking when you’ve already reached your conclusion. I always err on the side of ‘language is complex’, and refrain from stating any hard rules unless I can be absolutely certain.
Also, thanks for your Finnish grammar lesson. 🙂 I’ll try to read it more carefully later, when I have more time.
@Monzach
Classic! :p
IP:
Well, there’s no good way to make warnings pretty and not-dire not-doom-is-coming-your-way in Finnish… so. 😀
(I slightly kid, but it is often something that requires more words and we know how long Finnish words can grow, so this blunt approach is usually the best.)
I mean, we don’t even have “please” in Finnish! “Kiitos” is not a suitable substitute for that! Usually, when we’d say something like “please hand over that thingamagic”, we use our conditional form instead; this is the polite form for us.
“Voisitko antaa tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Would you hand over that thingamagic to me?”
Because otherwise, you’re going to sound really smarmy (like 50% Shrekeli smary) if you deploy “kiitos” nillywilly like it doesn’t mean a thing; if we really need to work on “please” substitute, we’ve been going down this route:
“Olisitko ystävällinen ja antaisit tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Would you please be kind and hand over that thingamagic to me?”
Of course, these days, Finglish (Finnish + English) to rescue! “Pliis” (a Finglish form of spoken “please”, obv) is something you can heard tucked after or before conditional-form request.
“Pliis antaisitko tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle?”
“Antaisitko tuon hilavitkuttimen minulle pliis?”
And the first Swedish word after obvious ones (ja, nej, tack, 1-10) is “omskakas”. “Shake”, often seen in juice and milk boxes.
Which IMHO is an inherently funny word, just like “masticate” is an inherently funny word in English.
@ imaginary petal et al
That has all been fascinating; thank you!
It’s actually helped me with my English too. It’s funny, when you learn a foreign language teachers launch into stuff about participles and perfect/imperfect, but no one has ever first explained what that means in your original language (which presumably you pick up intuitively by mimicry). I still don’t really know what all those phrases mean, but your teaching has helped me at least start.
Is this something you do professionally? You’re very good at it. And I tell you, when I finally get my time machine working necessitating language to cope with ontological paradoxes and events which may or may not have happened once/yet, you are going to be my go-to guy (or whichever appellation you prefer) for working out the new syntax.
(First trip will be to save that apatosaurus so it doesn’t get discovered as a fossil and knock brontosaurus of its rightful perch)
I just have to say I’m enjoying this merry meeting very much! I took a call from BF Atomica, fell asleep and only now got to catch up with this.
I’ll add a Turku reinforcement on my behalf, and any Mammotheers will be offered beverages of choice and have a free access to my cupboards and fridge. Just remember that around these regions saying ‘no’ means yes, but not in the creepy Roosh way, only when offered things to eat or drink. So you will leave the establishment well nourished whether you like it or not!
@Skiriki
Hah, Finglish! My cat’s name is Fingie, and now I’m feeling highly compelled to refer to his meowing as Finglish.
I have to say the word “omskakas” seems rare to me. It’s funny how some words and phrases can be overused in certain contexts, making them seem way more common than they really are in the language.
@Alan
Thanks! I’ve worked professionally with adult second language learners for a few years in the past, but now I do it as a volunteer. I don’t have the relevant education in order to teach as a career, but we don’t have enough teachers so it’s possible to find work sometimes anyway.
I agree with what you say about launching into details of grammar. This strategy can work with college educated people who have already spent time thinking about how their language works, and are aware of the terminology of grammar. However, it is utterly pointless trying to discuss reflexive pronouns with, let’s say, a 50 year old Afghan woman who has never been able to read even in her native language.
For most people it’s sufficient to learn grammar terms as ‘headlines’ for a topic, for example understanding that ‘tense’ means we’re talking about time, or that ‘verbs’ means we’re talking about things we do or things that happen. Frankly, the average person probably couldn’t tell you what a participle actually is, so why should second language learners be bothered with it? What’s important is knowing how to use the language – not knowing how to talk about language.
@IP: Yeah, but if you drink juice or surmjölk or stuff like that, you’re so gonna see it everywhere and therefore it totally leaps to my mind. 😀
“Omskakas”.
Tee hee hee hee.
(Sleep deprived funnies are the best funnies.)
This is awesome. My young lady and I have been language-geeking over this thread whilst on the bus.
Technically, tense indicates an event or state’s location in time or “when” something happens (past, present, future) whereas aspect indicates behavior at that time or “how” something happens (continuously, periodically, completely, etc). Modality indicates things like likelihood (or necessity, appropriateness, etc). But most people don’t bother to get specific with the categories if the language in question doesn’t have clear lines of separation built in. (English and Swedish don’t. Chinese and Japanese do.)
And even if you manage to iron things out, you can still have different rules for stative and dynamic verbs throwing fuckery into everything.
bluecat:
For what it’s worth, when I started learning English, I thought some multiple-meaning words like “match” were curious, while taking for granted that my native Finnish had its own multiple-meaning words.
Translating Finnish idioms into English is also always fun. My friend’s Scottish boyfriend had no idea what my friend meant when she said she was running around with her hair in a pipe. Tukka putkella = Your hair in the form of a pipe (behind your head) rather than relaxed, used as an expression when someone is doing stuff very fast.
Omskakas 😀
I agree with you to a point. I took Japanese for a few years through an immersion class and it started to get difficult in the more advanced classes when we couldn’t talk about grammar. We had to find outside texts to learn more about the grammar rules for some of it to make sense.
@kupo
You can talk about grammar without talking about grammar, if that makes sense.