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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
That is how you may feel when the
dreaded subject of the French
subjunctive is raised! We’ve already
covered the subjunctive mood , but mood and tense are closely
related. Here we’ll review the sequence of
tenses (concordance des temps) in French,
which we also touched on in ‘Tense Times’
(May ’07).
As in English, tense is often
straightforward in simple sentences (je sais
qu’il est là/était là/sera là – I know he’s
here/was here/will be here), simply denoting
the time (past, present or future) of the action.
In both languages, however, sequence of tense
is important in subordinate clauses. A major
difference between the two languages is the
‘when’ clause, referring to a point in the
future, which takes the present in English and
the future in French (As soon as/when he gets
here, let me know – Dès qu’il arrivera,
prévenez-moi).
Conditional subordinate
clauses (introduced by if/si etc) follow the
same rules in both languages (If it rains we
can…/If it rained, we could…/If it had
rained, we could have... – s’il pleut, nous
pourrons…/s’il pleuvait, nous pourrions…/s’il
avait plu, nous aurions pu…), although it’s
surprising how often native English speakers
get the third form wrong (If it would have
rained, often pronounced or even written
“would of”) instead of => had rained!
Urrrggh! As for subjunctive subordinate
clauses, thankfully present-day spoken French
only uses the present form of the subjunctive,
whether or not the main clause is in the
present or past. Note that the imperfect form is
still used in formal written French when the
main clause is in the past):
• Verbs ending in -er: – Il faut qu’il aille/il
fallait qu’il aille (allât – imperfect
subjunctive – in formal French) – he
must/had to go
• Verbs ending in -ir: – Il faut qu’il finesse/il
fallait qu’il finesse – he must/had to finish
(note that the present and imperfect
subjunctive of -ir verbs are the same)
• Verbs ending in -re: – Il faut qu’il le
rende/il fallait qu’il le rende (rendît -
imperfect subjunctive – in formal French) –
he must/had to return it.
The same rule holds true for
the conditional in the above sentences:
il faudrait qu’il vienne (or qu’il vînt in formal
and written French)
The imperfect subjunctive may still be
heard in spoken French in the third person of
some common verbs (j’attendais qu’il s’en
allât – I was waiting for him to leave),
although it’s quite acceptable to use the
present (j’attendais qu’il s’en aille), as well as
in a few set phrases; qui l’eût cru ? (or qui
l’aurait cru – who would have thought it?) the
former (eût) form is still often heard.
A common ‘gotcha’: après que takes the
infinitive, avant que takes the subjunctive.
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