Tag: subjunctive

Posted in English

Fizeram Alguns Erros

Posted on by Colin Lusk

Well, I said the other day I was going to do more grammar exercises and that’s just what I’ve been doing. I’m well into “Gramática Aplicada” and I have found two mistakes in an exercise on subjunctive verbs.

As you can see, I’ve use Infitivo Pessoal in both the first and second sentences. The answers given both use P de C though. It seems to be an error. Both would be right if you chucked a “que” into the original sentences. Worse, the second one is in third person plural instead of second person singular. I checked with two actual Portuguese people to confirm I was right before dashing to social media to brag shamelessly though.

Posted in Portuguese

Declarações Aleatórias Sobre o Livro “Matadouro Cinco” de Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on by Colin Lusk

tralfamadoreanPara praticar a gramática de B2 PT-PT (tempos verbais conjuntivos e situações que são *quase* conjuntivas com asterisco)

Acho que este livro é o melhor do Kurt Vonnegut *
Não acho que exista um livro melhor dele.
Há quem digam que “Bluebeard” é melhor mas são loucos.
Quer concordes quer não, é um dos melhores livros americanos desde sempre.
É possível que seja considerado um clássico
É curto e portanto é possível lê-lo num dia. *
Oxalá que não o escritor não morresse.
Os Tralfamadoreans levaram o Billy a uma jardim zoológico que fica no seu planeta.
O Billy tinha visitado o jardim zoológico de Ilium que fica no seu próprio planeta. *
Colocaram o Billy numa gaiola com a Montana e disseram-lhes “façam o que fizerem, não não conseguirão fugir”
“Vocês são prisioneiros mas aqui na gaiola podem fazer o que quiserem”
Trataram o Billy e a Montana como se fossem animais de estimação.
Se pudessem fugir, teriam fugido.
Uma guarda avisou-os: “sugiro que não se preocupem porque podemos ver o passado e o futuro, e sabemos que nunca termina. Este momento é, foi, e será para a eternidade”

Billy pensou “Logo que volte à minha terra, vou buscar a minha mulher. Mas tenho dúvidas que veja a minha terra mais uma vez”
“Estou desligado no tempo” disse Billy “Faço viagens ao passado e ao futuro. E sempre que regressar à destruição do Dresden vou ouvir as canções dos pássaros”
O Billy está a fazer o seu discurso, ao fim de que seja atirado por o seu inimigo.
Sabe que isto acontecerá mas também sabem que não é possível evitá-lo *

Posted in English

Mind Mapping

Posted on by Colin Lusk
Clipboard01

I decided to try my hand at mind-mapping to set out all the situations in which I might need to use the subjunctive tenses. In case you don’t know, these are three tenses that are used in situations where there’s some sort of doubt, intention, or future eventuality implied. Usually, they are not the main verb in a sentence, just part of a supporting phrase. They’re actually pretty easy to conjugate. The difficulty for us English speakers is recognising the situation in which they are needed, and remembering to pull one out of the bag in place of the standard indicative. That’s because we hardly use them at all in English. Basically the only time they would rear their head is in a phrase like “If I were a rich man”. So, in the song:

If I were a rich man,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum,
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum.

“Were” is a subjunctive (imperfect subjunctive, I think) because it’s describing a hypothetical situation (being a rich man), which is why we’re using “were” instead of “was”. When it comes to translating, I think the verb we want here is “Ser” because although rich people can become poor, it feels more like a statement about a permanent state of affairs. I don’t think he wants to be rich for just one day. So we would translate this as “fosse” (first person imperfect subjunctive of “ser”)

“I’d” – short for “I would” of course – indicates we’re dealing with the conditional, which is a normal indicative tense, because it’s leading into the main thrust in the sentence: what he would do in that hypothetical situation. It’s a little difficult to translate because I don’t know the Portuguese verb for “to biddy-biddy-bum” but let me make an educated guess: bidibidibombiar, and you can make the first person conditional by just whacking an “-ia” on the end.

As for the daidles and deedles, well, I’ll have to leave those to someone with more expertise. Hey, my degrees are both in science, so what do I know about language? They’ll be adverbs, I expect. I never trusted adverbs.
Putting it all together then:

Se eu fosse um homem rico,
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum,
Todos os dias, eu bidibidibombiaria.

If you’re reading this and you’re not sure if you need to know about subjunctives, check with your teacher, but I believe they only really come into play at DIPLE/B2 level. It’s worth looking at them earlier, if only because they come up in books quite often and it’s useful to be able to recognise them, but I don’t think you would need to worry about them at B1 level… I didn’t anyway!

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ve saved a pdf of the work in progress here. So far it only has the presente do conjuntivo (present subjunctive) but when it’s finished it’ll have the other two subjunctives – imperfeito (imperfect) and futuro (future)

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ve saved a pdf of the work in progress here. So far it only has the presente do conjuntivo (present subjunctive) but when it’s finished it’ll have the other two subjunctives – imperfeito (imperfect) and futuro (future)

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ve saved a pdf of the diagram here.