hazio

[zealous coyote]

Please be patient

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[cerulean plank]

Or when I'm quoting something to a friend

[upbeat cedar]

Passé simple is exclusive for writing. You are going to use a mixture of l'imparfait, passé composé, plus-que-parfait depending on the context and what you are expressing.

These are all past tenses. L'imparfait is used for recalling tales a lot, in both writing and speaking. Have you learned it yet?

[cerulean plank]

I know them all except plus-que-parfait

[upbeat cedar]

Gotchu. Plus-que-parfait is a tense you often learn later. L'imparfait and passé composé are more common

[cerulean plank]

But I saw it is something like être in imperfect and the past participle?

Do i remember that right?

Or avoir ofc

[upbeat cedar]

Avoir and être can be used for passé composé

Like

J'ai vu (i saw)
Je suis allé (I went)

Être for the imparfait is like

J'étais heureux (I was happy)

Étais = être imparfait

[cerulean plank]

What about reciting a poem?

Still no past simple?

[upbeat cedar]

If you are reciting something already written, like a book or poem you would use passé simple

If the book/poem uses it

Tense doesnt change if you are just reading something out loud 🙂

But for regular spoken conversation passé simple is not used

Except for one very specific and small dialect found in Nova Scotia

[cerulean plank]

Okay, I know it would be a weird reason to change the tense just because you are saying it, but it is also weird for me to use a tense only in book hah

[upbeat cedar]

Its like if you are reciting a poem or novel in english

[cerulean plank]

Now I'm curious if some character is speaking about the past, do they "speak" in passé compossé or is it written in passe simple as everything other in a book? 👀

[upbeat cedar]

You don't change the words even if it seems archaic (like shakespere)

Hmmm i think in a book if someone was writing dialogue, it wouldnt be passe simple

Passé simple is just for actions and people rarely use it for in speech. It would seem bizarre to me.

[glad raptor]

Using passé simple is completely normal for narration

Like a campfire story or sth

[cerulean plank]

Okay, thanks

I'm feeling like a child who's trying to take someone against the grain lol

[upbeat cedar]

Oohh okay gotchu. Thank you alba 🙂

I guess yeah since theyre recounting a story that makes sense

I was thinking about just normal dialogue in general lol

[glad raptor]

I feel like it could go either way if you're telling a story to a kiddo, sometimes people are lazy and/or don't have the best grasp of passé simple so they'll avoid using it regardless, and for very little ones you may want to focus on everyday tenses to start with, but if you're doing the whole "once upon a time" "there once was a man" shit it's probably passé simple

[turbid hill]

yep, basically every podcast i've listened to used passé simple for narration

[upbeat cedar]

Yeah that makes sense

[turbid hill]

random, but do kids in france learn the passé simple?

like when do they learn it

[glad raptor]

Afaik they learn it exists but not the conjugation

[upbeat cedar]

Probably when they read stuff im hoping

[glad raptor]

French natives generally don't know the conjugation rules of passé simple and just know as much as they've heard or read

[turbid hill]

ah

[upbeat cedar]

Me reading my child le petit prince gotta start them early

[turbid hill]

makes sense then why they only really use it with common verbs for the most part

[glad raptor]

Generally anything that isn't passé simple is more reserved to kids books type stuff which may not even be in the past tense, or like, first-person narration or something

E.g. L'étranger is written without passé simple as it's written in first person

[upbeat cedar]

Interesting

[cerulean plank]

Rel, I'm from Poland, we have 8 cases of declension (not as bad as Hungarian and Finnish lol) and I was mind blown when I saw an episode about Polish from Langfocus

[glad raptor]

Lol

[upbeat cedar]

Whats declension?

[turbid hill]

ah yes slavic language moment

[cerulean plank]

Something like conjugation but for nouns

[upbeat cedar]

Ahh okay

Interesting

[turbid hill]

as a russian learner, the bane of my existence

😭

[glad raptor]

It's kinda like conjugating nouns instead of using prepositions

[upbeat cedar]

Ohhhhh

Thats cool

Damn u got 8

[cerulean plank]

In english you can say "Adam killed a cat" and "A cat killed Adam" and it will mean different things

[upbeat cedar]

Oh thats in latin too right

[turbid hill]

polish didn't get rid of vocative and locative, interesting

[upbeat cedar]

I remember reading about that in linguistics

[cerulean plank]

But in polish, "Adam zabił kota" i "Kota zabił Adam" means the same(Adam killed a cat), declension allows some very flexible syntax

If I want to say "A cat killed Adam" it would be "Kot zabił Adama" or "Adama zabił kot"

Kot -> kota Adam-> Adama

Both are ""living"" masculine so they use the same declension for the same case

[turbid hill]

but adam killed a cat would be adam zabil kota?

[cerulean plank]

And we have 8 of those for different cases... Hah

[cerulean plank]

Yes

Flexible syntax is main in the ass because sometimes shuffling things around sounds natural and sometimes they don't :v, it is used commonly for emphasis

[upbeat cedar]

Thats very cool 🙂

[cerulean plank]

And we have conjugation in french style so for you, me, he etc. we have different endings, but they sound different too! So we don't really use subject pronouns, only if we want to emphasize

and we have far less tenses

[cerulean plank]

We literally only use vocative when addressing someone by their occupation... Or while swearing

I think if not swearing we would stop using it by now, but yeah, that one is the first one to go in the future polish i think, but I don't know why we should get rid of locative

[cerulean plank]

I mean really we even stopped using it when calling someone name and kids stopped to use it for calling "Mom!" and "Dad!" too

[turbid hill]

makes sense, i was wrong when i thought it wasn't used lol

but vocative yeah

[turbid hill]

sounds like the imperatif in french

[cerulean plank]

Can you write an example? We have impératif too but I don't think I understand your point

You mean swearing or addressing?

[turbid hill]

addressing

probably wrong tbh

idt there's an exact umm cognate in french

[cerulean plank]

By addressing I meant like "Professor, do you hear me?"

We would then use "Profesorze" and not "Profesor"

I'm curious if there will be a time when vocative would be used only in writing...

I think that happened after WW2 with polish past perfect

We don't use it anymore even in books, but before ww2 it was very common and you can see it in older books

@turbid hill Do you change the case when doing negation in Russian? I know you aren't in Czech so I'm curious if it's a Polish quirk or not

[turbid hill]

yes

u menya yest' den'gi

i have money

[cerulean plank]

Oh, so not changing it is a Czech quirk then

[turbid hill]

u menya net deneg

I don't have money

but that's mostly for genitive