Both German and English have a future tense, and it is formed in much the same way. We don't understand your question!titan2 said:Does German have a future tense? If English doesn't and English is derived from German, then German should not either.
That may be so, Jana. I do know that the term "tense" is not only very common in English but is also the standard term used. Frankly, one of the reasons German seemed logical to me is that it works much the same as English. Spanish and French are much more difficult for me to understand, even theoretically, because of the way the verbs themselves, as you say, "change".Jana337 said:I am not a linguist but I gather from past discussions in this forums that some do not consider will + infinitive (and equivalents in other languages) a tense. A tense in the proper sense of the word allegedly involves a change in the verb itself (e.g. I will speak in Italian = parlerò, so Italian has a future tense). I hope I haven't misrepresented the view. Needless to say, this theoretical understanding of tenses deviates from what an ordinary learner can possibly encounter.
Jana
Jana337 said:I am not a linguist but I gather from past discussions in this forums that some do not consider will + infinitive (and equivalents in other languages) a tense. A tense in the proper sense of the word allegedly involves a change in the verb itself (e.g. I will speak in Italian = parlerò, so Italian has a future tense). I hope I haven't misrepresented the view. Needless to say, this theoretical understanding of tenses deviates from what an ordinary learner can possibly encounter.
Jana
se16teddy said:English has innumerable ways of referring to the future, some of which are often arbitrarily selected for the appelation 'future tenses'.
English and German are related. English and German share some ways to refer to the future (Ich will gehen, ich soll gehen / I will go, I shall go, though the semantics differ); but other ways to refer to the future are used in only one of the languages (I am to go, ich werde gehen).
They have fused by now. Native speakers interpret parlerai and hablaré as single words, whereas "will" and "speak" are seen as independent words.Whodunit said:Hm, judging it from that point of view, I would not call "je parlerai" (FR) or "yo hablaré" (SP) a future tense either. They are just formed by using the infinitive + preterite (SP)/imperfect (FR) ending.
A minor point: -ai is not an imperfect ending - that would be -ais, and then the expression "je parlerais" is in the conditional i.e. "I would speak". The future endings are distinct from the imperfect in French:Whodunit said:Hm, judging it from that point of view, I would not call "je parlerai" (FR) or "yo hablaré" (SP) a future tense either. They are just formed by using the infinitive + preterite (SP)/imperfect (FR) ending.
I don't think it's Whodunit's idea.englishman said:You have a strange idea regarding tenses BTW.
englishman said:A minor point: -ai is not an imperfect ending - that would be -ais, and then the expression "je parlerais" is in the conditional i.e. "I would speak". The future endings are distinct from the imperfect in French:
future: -ai -as -a -ons -ez -ont
imperfect: -ais -ais -ait -ions -iez- aient
Given that this is the German forum, I'll stop now however.
You have a strange idea regarding tenses BTW. Remember that "future tense" merely means "an expression indicating future time", and all natural languages can do that, so they all have future tenses. Some, like English, have multiple ways in which to express the future tense, but they are all future tenses nonetheless.
Ask about only one topic in each thread. If you have more than one question, open a thread for each of them. Rules
Good to have you here again.titan2 said:I knew "derived" was not the best term, but I didn't have time to change the post.
In which sense does English not have a future tense? Which languages do?Does German have a future tense? If English doesn't...
Yes, that's right.jazyk said:Parlare + ho = parlerò
Parlare + hai = parlerai
Parlare + ha = parlerà
Parlare + abbiamo = parleremo
Parlare + avete = parlerete
Parlare + hanno = parleranno
This difference between Italian and other Romance langauges is a bit artificial. As Jazyk demonstrates, the Italian future tense basically consists of an infinitive and avere, an auxiliary verb. The change in the stem (parlerai) is not a defining feature of the Italian future tense. It is actually a peculiarity of verbs ending in -are (admittedly, there are many of them).Whodunit said:Hm, judging it from that point of view, I would not call "je parlerai" (FR) or "yo hablaré" (SP) a future tense either. They are just formed by using the infinitive + preterite (SP)/imperfect (FR) ending. It is interesting, though, that it does not work this way in Italian - the stem changes!
Jana337 said:I am not a linguist but I gather from past discussions in this forums that some do not consider will + infinitive (and equivalents in other languages) a tense. A tense in the proper sense of the word allegedly involves a change in the verb itself (e.g. I will speak in Italian = parlerò, so Italian has a future tense). I hope I haven't misrepresented the view. Needless to say, this theoretical understanding of tenses deviates from what an ordinary learner can possibly encounter.
Jana
OK.titan2 said:I simply meant what you stated in your post, i.e. the discussions I read on this forum and on the Wikipedia concerning tenses in English. I inferred that since English and German are related, the grammar should be similar.
Whodunit said:Outsider is right: It was not my idea that German, English, and French have no future tense. If you ask me, I don't even know any language that has such a "real" future tense.
Whodunit said:j'allerai indicate a future action, but they don't have own verb endings
englishman said:The second sentence above seems to contradict the first, unless I'm not understanding you. Anyway, I've no idea what you consider to be a "real" future tense - I've never heard it suggested that the future tense forms in English or German are less "real" than those of French or Spanish.
It's j'irai.
But I don't understand why you think that a future tense requires a stem + endings - I've read plenty of grammar books over the years, but I've never seen that suggested before. Do you have a specific reference to something that suggests this ?
Not exactly:By "real" I mean that there is a new verb ending for the future tense. German and English use "werden/will", French use the passé simple ending, Spanish and Italian use the endings of "to have" in the present, Arabic uses a future particle, ...
englishman said:Remember that "future tense" merely means "an expression indicating future time", and all natural languages can do that, so they all have future tenses.
They all look like fine future tenses to me: they express something that will happen in the future. What more do you need ?se16teddy said:I don't think this is the usual definition of a 'future tense'. By this definition, 'I gehe morgen weg', 'Je pars demain' and 'I am going tomorrow' are all examples of future tenses.
Is that the Royal We ?se16teddy said:Usually, though, we think of these forms as present tenses, but acknowledge that in English, French and German present tenses very often refer to the future (and sometimes to the past).
Right. But we're not talking about them being isolated and out of context; you can't just ignore some of the words in the sentence when parsing it, can you ?se16teddy said:We call 'je pars', 'I am going' and 'ich gehe weg' present tenses because if we see these forms isolated and out of context we presume they will refer to the present.
Yikes. I prefer my definition. It's rather more practical to use.se16teddy said:I think when we say 'future tense' we usually mean
a) a form of a word (a verb) that more often than not refers to the future (such as 'irai'),
and we very often also include
b) a unit consisting of an auxiliary verb plus infinitive or similar that more often than not refers to the future, such as 'wird gehen'.
I think that 'wird gehen' fits definition b) fine, but I have some doubts about 'will go' (eg 'the car won't go', 'I won't go!'
I wonder if French grammars style 'je vais aller' a future tense?
This is the exact reasoning MrMagoo used when I stated that Spanish did have a proper future tense, so to speak.jazyk said:Parlare + ho = parlerò
Parlare + hai = parlerai
Parlare + ha = parlerà
Parlare + abbiamo = parleremo
Parlare + avete = parlerete
Parlare + hanno = parleranno
Turk said:Afaik romance languages all express future (not near future) in "have to do" form. For instance, parleras (as +parler), hablare (he + hablar). I don't have any idea of german but english forms with modals. I don't know how linguists categorize them but in turkish we have pretty different conjugation for future tense. The endings are different and have no relation to another verbe. Taking this in account, could we say romance languages don't have a real future tense too? Actually, this way of classification seems weird to me.
How would that help? I'll still define 'future tense' however I wish to suit my present purpose!englishman said:What we need now is a professor of linguistics to lay down the law. Any about ?
badgrammar said:Well, no, because what is the future tense in French? Take the verb être...
Je serai
tu seras
il sera
nous serons
vous serez
ils seront
So while in fact you can conjugate using the verb "avoir" (je vais être), there is also a verb that is independent of any other auxiliary verb, including 'to have'.
panjabigator said:I don't understand how a language cannot have a future tense. I consider the "will + verb" a future construction....I guess the difference is in whether it is one word or two.
Do you want future tenses from all languages or is this just a discussion of German, English, French and Italian?
Whodunit said:Ok, I have to admit that I was wrong about the thing with the passé simple. French forms its future by adding the ending of the verb "to have" (avoir) in the present:
j'ai --> je parlerai
tu as --> tu parleras
il a --> il parlera
nous avons --> nous parlerons
vous avez --> vous parlerez
ils ont --> ils parleront
In which sense does English not have a future tense? Which languages do?
badgrammar said:Ouuuu... Damn you!Good point! Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The present tense of avoir or the future tense of verbs in general?
se16teddy said:How would that help? I'll still define 'future tense' however I wish to suit my present purpose!
I think that Latvian has non-periphrastic future tense: darīt (inf. – to do) – daru (present – I do) – darīšu (future – I will do).cajzl said:The ancient IE languages had non-periphrastic future tense(s).
karuna said:I think that Latvian has non-periphrastic future tense: darīt (inf. – to do) – daru (present – I do) – darīšu (future – I will do).
Sometimes Latvians speaking English incorrectly use future tense where it shouldn't be used. When it will rain, I will be happy because future tense is used in Latvian: Kad līs lietus, es priecāšos.
Isn't 會 essentially a future marker? Especially in Cantonese, where it does not have the meaning of "to know how" that it has in Mandarin. I mean, you can't say "Kam-jat ngo wui zou" since kam-jat means "yesterday" and ngo wui zou means "I will do", so perhaps wui can only refer to future events?midismilex said:In Taiwan, there're no future tense no matter who you are (pronoun) in the Taiwanese, Hakka and Mandarin languages. Though the grammar among these three languages still have somewhat different. It seems that the languages of our obriginals have future tense, I am not quite sure. Besides, the Tibetan and the Mongolian languages are somewhat quite complicated just like the Japanese language......Just a thought.
In this case "go", just put "會去" in the Mandanrin language after I/you(single and plural)/he/she/it/we/they, and you've already finished the sentence.^_^
englishman said:You can certainly define tenses anyway you like, but given that there are people who pick over the bones of this kind of stuff in detail, I'd be keen to have their opinion as to what constitutes a tense.
Whodunit said:Well, so Latvian drops the "t", uses the infinitive stem (without the "t" of course) and adds š for the first person and s for the others. But as it seems, the verb būt (to have) has nothing to do with the future tense in Latvian, right?