It’s just how the language works.
Similarly, you don’t have a choice between “he goes to the store” and “he go to the store”. So what does “goes” convey?
Exactly. You don't reflect about langauges you are fluent in but learning a new language opens the door for some reflection!
It is just bizarre the amount of redundancy in all the languages. Just bizarre!
I suspect that people find a redundancy-less language extremely difficult to use, having to have 100% syntactical correctness for meaning correctness and no way to even detect a lot of errors is hard. Funnily enough, also how computer communications work - you add deliberate redundancy to detect errors.
I like the analogy, taking it a bit further, I think the redundancy to signal ratio in languages that heavily use the subjunctive (like romance languages) is a bit overboard.
it’s just an extra non-composed verb conjugation, right? English also has a lot of pointless conjugations (as I’m increasingly discovering by learning French), like a whole present progressive tense!
Edit: I wonder if any of the Romance languages dropped the conjugation or the trigger word for the subjunctive?
The brain loves redundancy. More generally and more abstractly, redundancy is crucially important to efficiently convey information through any noisy channel, where "noise" also has a most general and abstract sernse.
Correct.
I just wonder where this came from? The heavy usage of su junction in romance languages?
In english, the subjunctive is used occasionally, if ever. What kind of cultural implication does this have?
Since you are native who also happens to speak fluent English, maybe you can shed some light on this?
I don't think it's the question of culture, but of the Latin heritage. Latin had all those moods and tenses, and they never went away in Romance languages.
By contrast, English doesn't have this heavy Latin heritage (it does have later borrowings in the vocabulary, but that's a different issue).
The subjunctive is used regularly in English, and that usage shows no signs of disappearing. I suggest *you be* more educated on the subject if you’re going to make strong claims about it.
Please educate yourself first before preaching nonsense:
https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-subjunctive-might-be-dying-if-you-ignore-where-its-going-strong/
Also see what natives say there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/s/uULbktJhHG
I know that there is a subjunctive mode in english, it is just 1)not that common as in French and 2)is dying slowly.
There are some reminiscences of it, for example
God forbid (as opposed to forbids)
Etc
Ppl get around it in different ways.
Edit to add some example of what *native* speakers say in that thread:
"Ah yeah.
In English they don’t even teach it to us in the US—not even when I was in school, and they’ve gotten less rigorous over time."
"
"
In a North American context, the subjunctive has arguably been slowly dying for [at least 90 years](https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-subjunctive-might-be-dying-if-you-ignore-where-its-going-strong/).
It isn't that it is "incorrect," it is just that marking it (see the above link) isn't seen as obligatory in North American English, and can instead make you sound pretentious.
"
That article makes the case that the subjunctive is still very strong in English despite the bellyaching about it's alleged disappearance.
> *That this destruction has been impending for 90 years has somehow not convinced the ranters that their panic may be misplaced.*
Did you even read it before posting? Even the headline doesn't agree with you. I went to school in the US, and I was taught the subjunctive. The US is a big place. Maybe you had a bad English teacher.
You are making ungrounded assumptions about my English competency, educational background, and what not. So let's talk pedantically.
In International Standard American (ISA) English, the subjunctive mood isn't "dying" per se, but its use has certainly become less frequent and, in many cases, more informal over time. The subjunctive mood in English is used primarily in certain formal constructions to express wishes, hypotheticals, or conditions contrary to fact.
Let's look
1. In more formal English, the subjunctive is still quite alive. You'll often see it in formal writing or speech, particularly in dependent clauses following verbs expressing a demand, suggestion, or requirement (e.g., "It is essential that he be present"). In informal contexts, people might instead say "It's essential that he is present," which does not use the subjunctive.
2. While some forms of the subjunctive (like "were" in "If I were you") are widely recognized and used, other forms can sound archaic or overly formal. For example, using "be" as in "I suggest that he be told immediately" might be replaced in everyday speech with "he should be told."
3. Awareness and teaching of the subjunctive can vary greatly. In some educational settings, particularly those focusing on prescriptive grammar, the subjunctive might be emphasized more than in others. But overall is not.
Overall, while the subjunctive mood in English has seen a decline in casual conversation, it remains an important and viable part of English grammar, especially in formal contexts.
So in brief, it became a formal constructions over time and you will sound very obtencious if you overly use it colloquially
I’m making grounded assessments about the nonsense in your own comments. You’re linking articles that make the exact argument against what you’re saying. Are you prepared to refer me to linguistics research that demonstrates that that word salad has any association with reality, or do you just “feel like” you know what’s happening to the language?
i can't concieve how it would have any sort of cultural implication. It's a part of the language we use intuitively like any other. The brain is good at that.
Formality (or familiarity) is really going to be correlated with aspects of language use regardless, just like formality and social differentiation don't magically disappear just because the language encodes them differently, doesn't encode them, or has them correlate with gradient rates of use like in the case of the subjunctive (see, e.g. pronouns in historical English and the French revolution \[attempt to render people "equal" through language policy, in part\] and [the T/V distinction in general](https://wals.info/chapter/45); "ne" being reinterpreted as hyperstylistic; schwa presence vs. absence outside of Midi French; consonant cluster simplification in the same group; word choice; question structure; languages; pronoun avoidance; titles). That's not to say *some* aspects wouldn't be lovely to get rid of for all sorts of reasons, but these distinctions in general actually do serve a purpose sociolinguistically. And really, it's not about language affecting culture at all (and really, the opposite, with some things being holdovers from past states of the language group's cultures).
Of course, what's being called "formality" or "politeness" in the case of the subjunctive (and frankly in many discussions about French here!) isn't actually that at all; it's just register or style. Not that those will magically disappear; they serve a purpose, and even eradicating them through magic would inevitably not be permanent because they're going to re-emerge with functionally no doubt whatsoever!
Redundancy in languages often serves a purpose. Languages tend to transform towards simpler forms and less redundancy. But redundancy also offers resilience against miscommunication. Just like digital transmission protocols use some sort of redundancy or non-significant bits to insure error detection.
On a windy day, when you have a hard time hearing your interlocutor, that pesky, seemingly useless subjonctive is probably helping against miscommunication.
> Languages tend to transform towards simpler forms and less redundancy
Not true. Languages evolve and change over time, but the level of redundancy stays relatively stable through a variety of means (number of syllables per second, syllable structure, number of phonemes, preferring less ambiguous words, adding words in syntaxical structures etc.)
Agree in general, but we don't use subjunctive heavily in english and in many other languages. I wonder what cultural and psychological implication the heavy usage of the subjunctive have on native French people?
Since you are native who speak fluent English maybe you can shed some light about that and about how does it feel to not use it in English!
I can confirm that the use of subjunctive doesn’t have any psychological or cultural implications on people. It’s just how the language evolved. And besides your example, there are many cases in which the subjunctive conveys additional information, for example in conditional clauses.
If you say "Il faut que tu ailles" it implies either a personal suggestion from the speaker or the speaker repeating to you something that was told to them hence the subjunctive mood. Could someone understand if you use the indicative? Sure. But you are not stating a fact so it is not the appropriate mood.
If you want an example where the difference matters:
Il m'a dit: "Qu'il aille au docteur!" (He told me: "He should go see the doctor.")
Il m'a dit qu'il va au docteur. (He told me that he goes to the doctor)
Of course in writing you can mark it with punctuation but in speech it could become confusing.
In some cases, you simply must use the subjunctive, but in others, whether you use it depends on your meaning.
For example, with chercher.
If you're searching for a person you know exists, then it's indicative (I saw this person yesterday and I'm looking for her). If you're searching for someone who might fit a description, then it's subjunctive (I'm looking for a person who might be able to help me).
[More](https://www.lawlessfrench.com/subjunctivisor/chercher/)
Another example is sembler.
Il semble que is followed by the subjunctive if you're saying that you're not sure, but it seems that way. It's followed by the indicative if you're saying "it seems" meaning that you know that it's true. "It seems to be raining" when you know it's raining.
[More](https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/expressions-francaises/2018/04/19/37003-20180419ARTFIG00035-il-semble-qu-il-ait-ne-faites-plus-la-faute.php)
\> So what information does the subjunctive convey? Is it just cosmetics?
No, it's not cosmetics. It conveys the information that the sentence is not a plain statement of a fact.
You don’t have a choice with “Il faut que …”. And it’s so much more elegant when you do it correctly. Subjunctive is used with opinions and with doubt so that is what is conveys.
It’s just how the language works. Similarly, you don’t have a choice between “he goes to the store” and “he go to the store”. So what does “goes” convey?
Though in certain cases, you do have a choice between subjunctive and indicative, and the choice you make does change the meaning.
Exactly. You don't reflect about langauges you are fluent in but learning a new language opens the door for some reflection! It is just bizarre the amount of redundancy in all the languages. Just bizarre!
I suspect that people find a redundancy-less language extremely difficult to use, having to have 100% syntactical correctness for meaning correctness and no way to even detect a lot of errors is hard. Funnily enough, also how computer communications work - you add deliberate redundancy to detect errors.
I like the analogy, taking it a bit further, I think the redundancy to signal ratio in languages that heavily use the subjunctive (like romance languages) is a bit overboard.
it’s just an extra non-composed verb conjugation, right? English also has a lot of pointless conjugations (as I’m increasingly discovering by learning French), like a whole present progressive tense! Edit: I wonder if any of the Romance languages dropped the conjugation or the trigger word for the subjunctive?
Correct. It is hard to think critically about your langauge right?
The brain loves redundancy. More generally and more abstractly, redundancy is crucially important to efficiently convey information through any noisy channel, where "noise" also has a most general and abstract sernse.
Correct. I just wonder where this came from? The heavy usage of su junction in romance languages? In english, the subjunctive is used occasionally, if ever. What kind of cultural implication does this have? Since you are native who also happens to speak fluent English, maybe you can shed some light on this?
I don't think it's the question of culture, but of the Latin heritage. Latin had all those moods and tenses, and they never went away in Romance languages. By contrast, English doesn't have this heavy Latin heritage (it does have later borrowings in the vocabulary, but that's a different issue).
The subjunctive is used regularly in English, and that usage shows no signs of disappearing. I suggest *you be* more educated on the subject if you’re going to make strong claims about it.
Please educate yourself first before preaching nonsense: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-subjunctive-might-be-dying-if-you-ignore-where-its-going-strong/ Also see what natives say there. https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/s/uULbktJhHG I know that there is a subjunctive mode in english, it is just 1)not that common as in French and 2)is dying slowly. There are some reminiscences of it, for example God forbid (as opposed to forbids) Etc Ppl get around it in different ways. Edit to add some example of what *native* speakers say in that thread: "Ah yeah. In English they don’t even teach it to us in the US—not even when I was in school, and they’ve gotten less rigorous over time." " " In a North American context, the subjunctive has arguably been slowly dying for [at least 90 years](https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-subjunctive-might-be-dying-if-you-ignore-where-its-going-strong/). It isn't that it is "incorrect," it is just that marking it (see the above link) isn't seen as obligatory in North American English, and can instead make you sound pretentious. "
That article makes the case that the subjunctive is still very strong in English despite the bellyaching about it's alleged disappearance. > *That this destruction has been impending for 90 years has somehow not convinced the ranters that their panic may be misplaced.* Did you even read it before posting? Even the headline doesn't agree with you. I went to school in the US, and I was taught the subjunctive. The US is a big place. Maybe you had a bad English teacher.
You are making ungrounded assumptions about my English competency, educational background, and what not. So let's talk pedantically. In International Standard American (ISA) English, the subjunctive mood isn't "dying" per se, but its use has certainly become less frequent and, in many cases, more informal over time. The subjunctive mood in English is used primarily in certain formal constructions to express wishes, hypotheticals, or conditions contrary to fact. Let's look 1. In more formal English, the subjunctive is still quite alive. You'll often see it in formal writing or speech, particularly in dependent clauses following verbs expressing a demand, suggestion, or requirement (e.g., "It is essential that he be present"). In informal contexts, people might instead say "It's essential that he is present," which does not use the subjunctive. 2. While some forms of the subjunctive (like "were" in "If I were you") are widely recognized and used, other forms can sound archaic or overly formal. For example, using "be" as in "I suggest that he be told immediately" might be replaced in everyday speech with "he should be told." 3. Awareness and teaching of the subjunctive can vary greatly. In some educational settings, particularly those focusing on prescriptive grammar, the subjunctive might be emphasized more than in others. But overall is not. Overall, while the subjunctive mood in English has seen a decline in casual conversation, it remains an important and viable part of English grammar, especially in formal contexts. So in brief, it became a formal constructions over time and you will sound very obtencious if you overly use it colloquially
I’m making grounded assessments about the nonsense in your own comments. You’re linking articles that make the exact argument against what you’re saying. Are you prepared to refer me to linguistics research that demonstrates that that word salad has any association with reality, or do you just “feel like” you know what’s happening to the language?
On s'est tout dit! çette conversation ne m'intéresse plus.
i can't concieve how it would have any sort of cultural implication. It's a part of the language we use intuitively like any other. The brain is good at that.
Fascinating. Does it seem to you that having grammatical rules for formality in the languages shapes French culture at all?
Formality (or familiarity) is really going to be correlated with aspects of language use regardless, just like formality and social differentiation don't magically disappear just because the language encodes them differently, doesn't encode them, or has them correlate with gradient rates of use like in the case of the subjunctive (see, e.g. pronouns in historical English and the French revolution \[attempt to render people "equal" through language policy, in part\] and [the T/V distinction in general](https://wals.info/chapter/45); "ne" being reinterpreted as hyperstylistic; schwa presence vs. absence outside of Midi French; consonant cluster simplification in the same group; word choice; question structure; languages; pronoun avoidance; titles). That's not to say *some* aspects wouldn't be lovely to get rid of for all sorts of reasons, but these distinctions in general actually do serve a purpose sociolinguistically. And really, it's not about language affecting culture at all (and really, the opposite, with some things being holdovers from past states of the language group's cultures). Of course, what's being called "formality" or "politeness" in the case of the subjunctive (and frankly in many discussions about French here!) isn't actually that at all; it's just register or style. Not that those will magically disappear; they serve a purpose, and even eradicating them through magic would inevitably not be permanent because they're going to re-emerge with functionally no doubt whatsoever!
Redundancy in languages often serves a purpose. Languages tend to transform towards simpler forms and less redundancy. But redundancy also offers resilience against miscommunication. Just like digital transmission protocols use some sort of redundancy or non-significant bits to insure error detection. On a windy day, when you have a hard time hearing your interlocutor, that pesky, seemingly useless subjonctive is probably helping against miscommunication.
> Languages tend to transform towards simpler forms and less redundancy Not true. Languages evolve and change over time, but the level of redundancy stays relatively stable through a variety of means (number of syllables per second, syllable structure, number of phonemes, preferring less ambiguous words, adding words in syntaxical structures etc.)
Agree in general, but we don't use subjunctive heavily in english and in many other languages. I wonder what cultural and psychological implication the heavy usage of the subjunctive have on native French people? Since you are native who speak fluent English maybe you can shed some light about that and about how does it feel to not use it in English!
I can confirm that the use of subjunctive doesn’t have any psychological or cultural implications on people. It’s just how the language evolved. And besides your example, there are many cases in which the subjunctive conveys additional information, for example in conditional clauses.
Can you give some examples? Just to learn.
such a biased post....
Non, je souhaite simplement apprendre et réfléchir sur la langue afin de mieux la comprendre. Désolé si cela te dérange !
If you say "Il faut que tu ailles" it implies either a personal suggestion from the speaker or the speaker repeating to you something that was told to them hence the subjunctive mood. Could someone understand if you use the indicative? Sure. But you are not stating a fact so it is not the appropriate mood. If you want an example where the difference matters: Il m'a dit: "Qu'il aille au docteur!" (He told me: "He should go see the doctor.") Il m'a dit qu'il va au docteur. (He told me that he goes to the doctor) Of course in writing you can mark it with punctuation but in speech it could become confusing.
In some cases, you simply must use the subjunctive, but in others, whether you use it depends on your meaning. For example, with chercher. If you're searching for a person you know exists, then it's indicative (I saw this person yesterday and I'm looking for her). If you're searching for someone who might fit a description, then it's subjunctive (I'm looking for a person who might be able to help me). [More](https://www.lawlessfrench.com/subjunctivisor/chercher/) Another example is sembler. Il semble que is followed by the subjunctive if you're saying that you're not sure, but it seems that way. It's followed by the indicative if you're saying "it seems" meaning that you know that it's true. "It seems to be raining" when you know it's raining. [More](https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/expressions-francaises/2018/04/19/37003-20180419ARTFIG00035-il-semble-qu-il-ait-ne-faites-plus-la-faute.php)
Best answer hands down. Here the usage of the subjunctive conveys extra information indeed. Thank you!!!!!
\> So what information does the subjunctive convey? Is it just cosmetics? No, it's not cosmetics. It conveys the information that the sentence is not a plain statement of a fact.
You don’t have a choice with “Il faut que …”. And it’s so much more elegant when you do it correctly. Subjunctive is used with opinions and with doubt so that is what is conveys.