Re: History of French

From: pierre.levy (pierre.levy11_at_wanadoo.fr)
Date: 08/27/04 

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:03:59 +0200

"Nossy" <heavy@heavier.net> a écrit dans le message de
news:ajusi05c215rf68scj8rsl5u8ebi9rnag6@4ax.com...
> Petro, peut-etre vous pouvez nous expliquer (en anglais) les evenments
> qui *causerent* l'elimination du simple et subjonctive.

   Hm ... Is the following written in so bad English?
    "As a French speaker, I am not sure
that either the "passe simple"(1), the
"imparfait du subjonctif" (2) or
the "plus que parfait du subjonctif" (3)
are definitively dead. Some French
people still like to use them in
conversation. It is too early to
give a date of death."

   How could I explain the causes of an event, which still didn't occur?

    The use of those tenses in spoken French is _rare_, but not extinct.
Maurice Grevisse explains, that those tenses are difficult or felt ugly
because they are rarely used, but not
rarely used because they are difficult or really ugly (subjective
judgement). He states that they are still living in spoken French specially
in the South of France and in Belgium in the region of Liege/Leuven. It is
noticed that complaints about bad use
of those tenses already accurred in
the XVIIth century. I'm not bothered
if somedy uses them properly in speech.

   In my opinion, the main reason why we don't use them often is that we
seldom need them.

   I recommend to beginners in French, that they systematically avoid them
until they are very very
familiar with that language.

   Petro.

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