Re: Translation Project! (was Re: Let the hammer fall!)

En réponse à Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...>:

> CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
> >¡Que caiga el martillo!  Actually, in the context of a batttle-cry, I
> >wonder
> >if you couldn't drop the "que"?
>
> I'd think it was possible. The verb gets the point across i think. It
> sounds a little funny to have Que in front of the verb like that, and
> the
> phrase not as a subclause.
>
Well, I don't know for Spanish, but in French, 3rd person imperatives must be
mandatorily preceeded with "que". It's without "que" that they would sound
funny to a French ear. In fact, you can sometimes find 3rd person imperatives
without "que" in French, but only in songs and poetry, showing that it's not
usual but only allowed when constraints like rythm and prosody become
predominant. Still, in those cases it takes often a while before the average
person recognizes that it's an imperative.

On the other hand AFAIK Spanish is more liberal as for the use of "que" or not
in front of a 3rd person imperative (probably because its subjunctive forms
sound much more different with the indicative forms than French subjunctive
forms with French indicative).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr