I do prefer the historical version and the background information. No one’s disgreeing on what came to be, but on how it came to be.
Good!
To further clarify (I hope), there are really two ways we use words like “imperative”. One is as morphology – that is, distinctive forms (case endings, for example). The other is as modality – that is, what we’re trying to express by speaking.
In Spanish, imperative morphology is only found in a very few forms – the rarely-used-in-most-places -d ending being one of them. Imperative modality, however, can be expressed in several ways. Besides the “no molesten” form, which has its origins in the subjunctive, you can also use an infinitive form, and this implies a less personally-directed request or rule – as others have mentioned, “no molestar” is actually more common on hotel doorknobs.
And sometimes you even use the indicative form! Don’t take my word for it, but rather Christopher J. Pountain’s:
In other words, “Give me a kilo of potatoes” can be expressed as, literally, “You give me a kilo of potatoes”. In my limited experience, this is often done to soften a request, to make it sound more polite and less demanding. It doesn’t look that way by the English translation, but imagine it said with a rising pitch at the end, almost as if you are asking the person, “Do you mind giving me a kilo of potatoes?”
Well, I’ve heard it several times where I come from - Gibraltar.
People there grow up with incomplete exposure to both English (the official language) and Spanish (the home language) and end up not so much bi-lingual as “alingual”, never completely mastering either. So a Gibraltarian schoolchild who enters the English-speaking educational system after being exposed mostly to Spanish during her early childhood at home with mum and granny is more than likely to say “Meeesss! He’s molesting me” to the teacher at school when the boy sitting behind her pulls her pigtail.
So this could also happen in the case of Latino immigrant children in the US who are exposed to Spanish at home, assume that the English word means the same thing and use it at school in the wrong context.
Two comments to clarify (or maybe confuse) things a bit:
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I am also native Spanish speaker, and I tend to agree with Nava in that the subjunctive and the imperative should be considered as completely separate entities. Even if subjunctive can be used in some instances as imperative (I posted KarlGrenze’s link in my post at the beginning of the thread), the native uses of subjunctive are also others, and talking about both forms together may be quite confusing from people that are learning Spanish coming from English, a language with not so much grammatical complexity.
-
In the debate about vuestro/vuestra - vuestros/vuestras, I think some are confusing the person concordance here:
Ese es vuestro caballo (That is your horse - meaning it is owned by more than one person, or showing a mark of respect if it is only owned by one person)
Esos son vuestros caballos (Those are your horses - meaning there are more than one horses, but again it might be one owner or several).
Fair enough. As I said before, it depends on the situation. For a native English speaker who is just starting to learn Spanish, and has no exposure to lingustics or to a third language, I agree with you. For a native English speaker who already learned some Spanish and wants to take it deeper, or who already has some exposure to linguistics or a third language, or who just generally is interested in something more than just the quickest and easiest categorization of verb morphology, I would suggest my approach.
By the way, in addition to the subjunctive-as-imperative medieval Latin forms I cited earlier, Latin – especially Roman-era Latin – really DID have totally separate imperative forms, which I’m pretty sure survive in Spanish only as the now-archaic -ad ending. Hence, Salve! (Hello! - singular), Salvete! (Hello! - plural), Vale! (Goodbye! - singular), Valete! (Goodbye! - plural). But be careful, Spanish speakers – the -te ending on the plural forms is NOT the -te pronoun of Spanish reflexives (e.g., ¡Vete! - Go away! - singular). It IS, rather, the precursor to that archaic -ad form, I’m almost sure.
A classic example of the two styles of teaching occurs in beginner’s French, where we are all dutifully taught that “nous --ons” is the 1st-person-plural verb from, even though the language as it is actually spoken almost always uses on (with 3rd-person-singular form) in this situation.
I admit that’s a more clear-cut teaching error than the subject of this thread.
I did get my reply back.
So yes, JKellyMap, in the past they were together, but now they’re no longer recognized that way. And to keep saying they’re still the same is incorrect. Although it is interesting from the “history and evolution of the language” perspective.
Here they do define the three types of modalities (speaker’s attitudes) different from the way you see. According to you, the imperative and subjunctive both talk about uncertainty, but here they don’t. The subjunctive is the one related to “thinking/wishing/assuming” something, while the imperative is a straightforward “order” that something will happen.
They do go on to mention that the imperative modality can be written (in certain situations) using the subjunctive forms.
The rarely used -d ending, you mean the imperative case ending for vosotros? Which is rare because, admittedly, not many Spanish speakers use vosotros. It is in the conjugation tables in the same section as the other 2 imperatives (there are imperative forms for vos and vosotros).
Thank you, KarlGrenze, for your proactive research. I am impressed that the RAE responded to you so quickly, and so clearly. Those folks do a top-notch job.
You are exactly right that the -d imperative is archaic because it corresponds to the equally archaic vosotros. My point was that it is the only Spanish imperative form (or maybe there are two, but certainly no more than two) which derives from a form which was exclusively imperative in Latin.
One last thing – please forgive me for exaggerating when I said the modern Spanish imperative “is” the subjunctive! I just get excited about the roots of things, that’s all. I get just as excited about the fact that the future tense in Spanish – the -rá, -rás, etc., orginally comes from attaching the verb haber to the infinitive. (In English, too, “I have to go to the bathroom” isn’t that different from “I will go to the bathroom.”) It’s the same excitement which makes me smile every time a strict Catholic Spanish speaker says “Ojalá…” – little do they know that they are, sort of, asking Allah to fulfill their hope!
In this world of prescriptivists who’ve already gotten all their answers from previous rulings and descriptivists who get their own answers, I’m sure they were just happy to have something meaningful to do.
(emphasis mine)
That made me laugh so hard!
I was about to forgive you, but you sinned again IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH!
We were taught in, must have been 5th grade for the first time, that ojalá comes from imshalla, “may God make it so.” And as I’m sure you should know, Allah is also what Christian Arab-speakers call God…
Will you kindly
- speak properly, and
- stop assuming that you know more about other people’s language, education, information, culture and thought processes than they do.
Nitpick: Although I emailed both of them, my answer came not directly from the RAE, but from “my” Academy. They all work together, though, thus their answers have the same validity. The RAE answer came after I wrote that and was less explanatory than the one given by the other one.
And oh yea, seconding Nava, every Catholic Spanish (or almost all Spanish speakers, period) knows what they mean when they say “Ojalá”. You don’t get too far into your schooling before someone (either family, friend, teachers) tells you about Arabic-derived words in Spanish. That is, if you haven’t noticed it before and asked about them.
Nava, that’s why I wrote – in italics, just so you wouldn’t miss it – *“sort of”. * This means “de alguna manera”, “en cierta forma”.
You were lucky to be pointed out this mild irony at a young age. Several Mexican friends of mine were unaware of it. I’d offer this as one data point for the failings of the Mexican educational system, but the fact is, from what I’ve seen, especially in math and geography, Mexican children are generally taught more than U.S. ones – admittedly, a low threshold to beat.
There
is
no
irony!
Allah is not the name of God in Arabic, it’s the Arabic word meaning God.
Just to clarify: the point is that, contrary to the misconceptions of many non-Arabic-speaking Christians, there is nothing about the Arabic word “Allah” that makes it specifically Muslim, or anti-Christian, or inappropriate for Christian use.
“Allah” is, as Nava says, simply the Arabic word meaning “God”, just as the French word meaning “God” is “Dieu” and the Italian word meaning “God” is “Dio” and the Latin word meaning “God” is “Deo”. Arabic-speaking Christians refer to God as “Allah”, just as Arabic-speaking Muslims do. The word “Allah” is different from names like “Zeus” or “Vishnu” or “Cthulu” in that it is not the individual name of a specific (non-Christian) deity, but rather a generic word for deity that is used by (non-Christian and Christian) monotheists to mean the Supreme Deity in whom they believe.
So no, there is no “irony” about strict Catholic Spanish-speakers using an Arabic loan phrase asking Allah to fulfill their hopes, unless you think for some reason it’s innately ironic for Catholic Spanish-speakers to use Arabic loan phrases at all.