Re: Cookbook

Justin Mansfield wrote:
>
> I'm told that German
> uses the subjunctive in the impersonal
True.  When I was in school, we called that particular mood the
"Konjunktiv I" which works just like the French subjonctif, as opposed
to "Konjunktiv II", which would be analogous to the conditionel.

Thus the classical recipe begins with "Man nehme ein halbes Dutzend
Eier...", which would have to be translated as "That one take half a
dozen eggs..." (dang, it's hard to translate subjunctive into English).  =\


> (mann soll... excuse my terrible
> German grammar and orthography, as I have the Yiddish me' zol in mind ;) )
The impersonal pronoun man is spelt with a single <n>, and the finite
verb form "man soll" is actually indicative rather than subjunctive.
;-)

Subjunctive would be "Man solle...", which is kinda redundant, since the
modal verb "sollen" already expresses something very similar to the
function of the subjunctive.  In fact, the construction with "sollen" is
somewhat clunky and not used in the cliché recipe.


-- Christian Thalmann

Reply