# Not knowing a basic usage or construction in a foreign language that you otherwise know well? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 3, 2018, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950 "2018-11-03T22:21:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/21 "2018-11-08T02:20:52Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > I’ve never heard « present simple du conditionnel ». It’s either the « conditionnel présent », or, much more rarely, the « présent du condtionnel ». All the present tenses are simple, so there’s no need to distinguish them from a compound form. My point stands: what my English-speaking teachers called it is _not what any grammar reference will call it!_ If you’re teaching someone how to use a computer you don’t tell them to “ram the cat twice”, you tell them to “double click on the mouse” because that’s what it’s called and you’re not supposed to reinvent language. That the whole class was Spaniards only made it worse. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/22 "2018-11-08T02:42:57Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > My point stands: what my English-speaking teachers called it is _not what any grammar reference will call it!_ If you’re teaching someone how to use a computer you don’t tell them to “ram the cat twice”, you tell them to “double click on the mouse” because that’s what it’s called and you’re not supposed to reinvent language. > > That the whole class was Spaniards only made it worse. I suppose. Though, if the difference between « conditionnel » and « conditionnel présent » were as great as “ram the cat” and “click the mouse,” I might understand your frustration a bit more clearly. As it stands, I’m not really how you could look up « conditionnel » and not eventually find « conditionnel présent », even if you stumbled onto « proposition conditionnelle » first. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/23 "2018-11-08T14:33:34Z")
I studied Spanish for six years in high school/college without ever learning the **vos** pronoun (a separate form of the second person singular with its own verb conjugations, widely used in Central and South America.) ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/24 "2018-11-08T14:43:54Z")
What has often stumped me in English or French is the little oral pragmatic exchanges that aren’t taught in school because they are (a) so very basic that nobody teaches them and (b) usually don’t occur in a literary context, the same way that looking for a parking space does not occur in anovel. For example: in a German context when someone stands on my foot I’d automatically say _Der unterste ist meiner_, but I’d be absolutely lost for words in any other language. ---
**Author:** ![chaika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chaika/32/405_2.png) [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/25 "2018-11-08T16:23:50Z")
My husband is a non-native speaker of English. For years he was utterly stumped by the future perfect in English, though he managed present and past perfect with little difficulty. But one day it just clicked for him, though I have no idea why. BTW, I have always been proud of his ability to navigate English conditional constructions, something that many native speakers of English struggle with. I also know a German woman who speaks English beautifully, except when it comes to negation. She says things like “We are no going to that restaurant” (no rather than not). I’m uncertain whether she is unaware of the distinction between no and not. That seems unlikely to me, but she consistently makes this mistake. Perhaps it was one of those grammatical errors that became fossilized in her spoken language. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/26 "2018-11-08T17:11:12Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > As for myself, the construction I never get is the French « avoir beau faire quelque chose ». It means to do something in vain, but it never seems to parse right. I’m never sure if the « quelque chose » happens or not. Yes, the “quelque chose” does happen, there’s even a connotation of insistance. It’s the expected/hoped for result that doesn’t. “J’ai beau étudier, je ne comprends rien.” = No matter how much I study, I still don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/27 "2018-11-08T18:17:45Z")
> [@chaika](#): > > I also know a German woman who speaks English beautifully, except when it comes to negation. She says things like “We are no going to that restaurant” (no rather than not). I’m uncertain whether she is unaware of the distinction between no and not. That seems unlikely to me, but she consistently makes this mistake. Perhaps it was one of those grammatical errors that became fossilized in her spoken language. That’s strange, because the distinction between “no” and “not” is the same between the German “nein” and “nicht”. I have never encountered a German speaker struggle particularly with this in English. Must be her personal stumbling block. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950/28 "2018-11-12T04:34:30Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > That’s strange, because the distinction between “no” and “not” is the same between the German “nein” and “nicht”. I have never encountered a German speaker struggle particularly with this in English. Must be her personal stumbling block. We also say “no” as the zero quantifier, similar to _kein-_ in German; I wonder if that’s somehow a factor. In general, it’s remarkable how very basic words in closely related languages can be so different, without even considering the complications of loanwords. For example, how did it happen that “but”, “aber”, and “maar” all mean the same thing in English, German, and Dutch, respectively? Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-knowing-a-basic-usage-or-construction-in-a-foreign-language-that-you-otherwise-know-well/823950.md?page=1)