Marcell Bendegúz Borsos, Réka Szemán: Mixed conditionals around the world III.
The tour dedicated to conditionals around the world concludes with German and Latin.
Mixed conditionals around the world III.
Welcome to the homepage of the Language Fair Symposium organized by the Department of English Linguistics at the University of Debrecen.
DEL Language Fair | 2022 
Thank you for this installment of this great series. I really enjoyed hearing the Latin examples.
I have a question about German. Is there any differnce between the conditional formed with “würden” and the the one formed without it, apart from the surface? E.g. “Wenn ich mehr Zeit hatte…” vs. “Wenn ich mehr Zeit haben würde…”.
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Dear Péter,
that is an interesting question to be asked, in German verbs have a separate subjunctive form (called Konjuktiv II form), however this form could be avoided by using würden + infinitive (and many speakers of German prefer using “würden+inf”, because it is easier and faster to form), so for example we can say “Ich würde fahren” or “Ich führe”, and both mean I would travel, however note that in the case of haben (to have) and sein (to be) we cannot use würden+infinitive, because that would sound clumsy. These verbs preserved their “original” Konjuktiv forms throughout history,”hätte” und “wäre”, because these verbs have always been amongst the most used verbs in spoken and as well as written German.
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Dear Marcell! Thank you for the response. Do you know about any dialectal differences in this respect? I can imagine that a form that is “clumsy” for some dialect is actually used in another.
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Dear Péter,
your hypothesis was good and right! I have done some research and due to migration (at least that’s what I have read) and how the usage of German changes, a lot of people within Germany use würden with sein and haben as well, however in standard high German (Hochdeutsch) they should always stand in their Konjuktiv forms.
Going back to your original question, there is no difference in meaning between würden+inf and Konjuktiv forms, however there are some cases when you cannot use the Konjuktiv form of a verb, because this form is identical to the past form.
For instance: Wir sagten es lieber nicht. This can mean either “We rather did not say it,” (past) or “We would rather not say it.” (Subjunctive.) In these cases würden+infinitive is always used.
So: Wir würden es lieber nicht sagen only means “We would rather not say it.
In colloquial German würden + inf is used quite often.
An another example: “Wenn ich das essen würde” or “Wenn ich das äße” both mean “If I ate it”. The more frequent form is “essen würde” (in everyday language) but both are correct. “Essen” (to eat) is just more frequent in colloquial language.
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Yes, I see. Are the cases where you have formal identity truly ungrammatical or just dispreferred? After all, the context can always clarify. Like in the similarly ambiguous English example “if I ate it”: “if I ate all of it, I became sick” (ha mindet megettem, beteg lettem) vs. “if I ate all of it, I would get fat” (ha mindet megenném, elhíznék).
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Indeed, context always wins. 😀
Wenn du mir helfen würdest, lernte ich leichter. If you helped me, I would learn easier. In this case the verb’s (lernte) past and subjunctive forms are identical however due to a “würden” preceeding “lernte” we know for sure that in this situation we are talking in subjunctive and thus we can avoid ambiguity.
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Very interesting presentation. I wonder how sharp the boundary is between CASUS POTENTIALIS and CASUS IRREALIS in Latin. Can you translate “I f I had a large house” with both the coniunctivus praesens imperfectum and coniunctivus praeteritum imperfectum? What is the difference?
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-> coniunctivus praesens imperfectum: Si domum magnam habeam, … =possibility (casus potentalis)
-> coniunctivus praeteritum imperfectum: Si domum magnam haberem, … =impossibility (casus irrealis)
Both express PRESENT tense, the difference is only the possibility factor.
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