Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- From: Joachim Pense <spam-collector@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 06:04:08 +0100
Am Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:58:39 -0000 schrieb Neeraj Mathur:
....
> In discussion, I was told (there were three Germans around) that the
> preterite sounded formal or archaic;
In spoken language it does. (Although in some northern parts of Germany,
the preterite is still used). In written (and formal) language, the
preterite is the standard. It's the present perfect that is being lost
there.
> one suggested at some point that it was
> appropriate for backgrounding action that gets interrupted, which really
> surprised me (this would be equivalent to the Romance imperfect).
I guess he took that from his Latin lessons or something like that. Most
German I know could not tell a semantic difference between preterite and
perfect. But they think there should be one and they just happened to
forget, so they import ideas of the usag from other languages or older
stages German.
I think today the difference between the tenses in German is only the
register. (I know fairy tale books for children that tell their stories in
the perfect instead of the preterite - to sound more child-like)
>
> Anyway, I know that some dialects of Italian have undergone the same process
> as French in abandoning their preterite; I seem to remember that it was the
The differentiation between the various past tenses is seen as a major
difficulty for a German learning a romance language like French or Italian.
Joachim
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- From: Ruud Harmsen
- Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- References:
- Past Tenses in Western Europe
- From: Neeraj Mathur
- Past Tenses in Western Europe
- Prev by Date: Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- Next by Date: Re: Female Dative in German
- Previous by thread: Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- Next by thread: Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
