Re: Politeness

En réponse à "M.E.S." <suomenkieli@...>:

>
> Spanish "I would like" would most definitely be
> "quisiera" and in archaic Span. "quisiese".  It's not
> that special of a form if you consider other verbs of
> this tense (past conditional, I think, but I really
> can't recall the tense schema very well at the
> moment).  You have "pudiera" which is "(I or s/he)
> would be able..." as in "would you be able to open the
> open?" - it's of the same verb tense.
>
Well, the form itself is imperfect subjunctive (the present - not past -
conditional of "querer" is "querría" and the one of "poder" is "podría"), but
for such verbs (used as auxiliaries most of the time), it is often used to
replace the present conditional (in the same way, French has a past conditional
II which is identical in form to the pluperfect subjunctive, but in French it's
nearly never used, not even in writing). It is especially used with "querer"
since the present conditional of this verb is nearly identical to its imperfect
indicative ("querría" vs. "quería", with the only difference that there is a
trill instead of a flap).

Note that the past conditional in Spanish is a compound tense: "habría querido"
or "hubiera querido" (the auxiliary "haber" also tends to use the imperfect
subjunctive in place of the present conditional).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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