Multilingual and Polyglot Wannabee Thread! MK I

Question: Soooo, what's the preterite?

Posted from TSR Mobile

We hadn't even discussed the preterite in Italian It was only in French that I found out about it, but we only need receptive knowledge at A-Level- it isn't really known about at GCSE.

In Spanish it's like the French Perfect. It has a set of conjugations... Where we'd say:

J'ai mangé we wouldn't use he comido... Instead it'd be comí

We hadn't even discussed the preterite in Italian It was only in French that I found out about it, but we only need receptive knowledge at A-Level- it isn't really known about at GCSE.

Ah, I see, but if memory serves, it's not really used in French either, right, having been largely replaced by the passé composé?

Not strictly true. It just means that the perfect in Spanish is used for more recent events, either when we'd also use the perfect in English (I've always wanted to live in America/siempre he querido vivir en los Estados Unidos) or when something happened close to the time of speaking (I had breakfast and I drove to the shops before coming here/me he desayunado y he conducido al supermercado antes de venir aquí), although I gather that the last example is okay to use the preterite with too

I'm getting along well thanks I've had it for a while, only recently come back to it, and I've been working on Spanish and Italian. I'm level 8 for both Just finished 'verbs present 2'.

I don't think I've added you on Duolingo What's your name?



It's been so long since I've actually learnt the tenses, so I can't remember the exact order, but in both French and Italian we've learnt the present, perfect past, imperfect past, simple future, other future, conditional and subjunctive. I only used some preterite in French because it was on a set phrases list and my teacher said it was very high level, so my response was 'yep, I'm using that then'



From what I saw on Wikipedia, I think it's historic past. I used it in French and an example phrase was 'the house where Shakespeare was born' - 'la maison où naquit Shakespeare' with 'naquit' being the preterite verb.

The preterite in Italian is like the preterite in French; it's not used in every day conversation, rather in books and newspapers. Although the Italian preterite is useful when conjugating the Italian imperfect subjunctive, which is used in everyday conversation

I see everyone's doing well on Duolingo

Ah, I see, but if memory serves, it's not really used in French either, right, having been largely replaced by the passé composé?

I'm 19 sunflower if you want todo add me.

Do you think duolinguo is the best free language learning software?

Posted from TSR Mobile

The preterite in Italian is like the preterite in French; it's not used in every day conversation, rather in books and newspapers. Although the Italian preterite is useful when conjugating the Italian imperfect subjunctive, which is used in everyday conversation

I see everyone's doing well on Duolingo

Personally I'd say the preterite (or remote past) is used more in Italian than in French. Generally the perfect tense is used for recent activities and the remote past is used for those that occurred a bit further in the past.
The further you go south into Italy the more they use the remote past instead of the perfect tense.
I agree though that you don't need to produce it for GCSE or even A-level but recognition will be necessary

I probably should stop pretending I know lots of things about Italian I'm just repeating what I've read from grammar books Have you been to Southern Italy much then? I've heard the divide between North and South is much bigger than in Britain, in culture and in wealth (almost a Republic of Venice/Two Sicilies split)?

All of my grammar knowledge comes from Living Italian or assuming it's the same as French
Not at all I've only been to Rome once and when I went I knew not one word of Italian
The south is less economically developed than the north (I think) because the north is in Europe's Blue Banana. It's this group of super urbanised cities in Europe that join to form, you guessed it, a banana

Hahaha well you've probably done a lot more work than I have so I trust you Ah, I've heard of the Blue Banana goes through England, Holland, the Ruhr, and Italy right? I've also heard that the dialects can also be heard a bit more in the south, like Neapolitan, because standard Italian is taken from old Tuscan...?

Ok but I warn you I'm FAR from an expert
Yeah that's right, it only touches the very north of Italy though eg. the top quarter of the whole country.
I honestly have no idea about dialects and can hardly contain myself over the existence of a language called Neapolitan

I honestly have no idea about dialects and can hardly contain myself over the existence of a language called Neapolitan

Hahaha well when Naples makes the best mafias and the best ice cream, it's only natural they have the best dialect names

That was my reaction to finding out about the sub-languages (would you call them that?) of Italian! There's one called Emiliano-Romagnolo, from the Emilia-Romagna region- I like it a lot that there's not only a region, but also a language with a very similar name to me I want to learn it!

That's where I'm from :P and I speak Neapolitan if anyone has questions about it


Posted from TSR Mobile