When to use the subjunctive?
What does the word weirdo stand for when using the subjunctive?
8 Answers
It stands for random 6 rules you will not be able to recall and apply quick enough to make a sentence in a real conversation, which have too many "exceptions" to be useful. Apply those rules, and you'll make countless mistakes; use those rules to understand real Spanish, and you'll end up confused. Suit yourself.
Unless you make sense of the subjunctive (hard thing, with so much rubbish published about it), or you learn it by intuition (and let your brain do the learning, instead of following bad rules), you'll struggle all your life with a mood that no native baby has ever made a mistake on. I mean, babies never ever make mistakes with either subjunctive, por/para or ser/estar. Never! They make countless mistakes, such as conjugating regular verbs (e.g. rompido instead of roto, veído instead of visto), and many other topics where natives keep making "mistakes", but not on those ones. How come? Because they are logical! The logic most books hide behind their crappy rules. How else could they get 100% of all sentences right all the time? Magic? Black magic? I find it more reasonable to assume that there is a logic (I personally see the logic).
6 rules you will not be able to recall and apply quick enough to make a sentence in a real conversation
You know, the more I study Spanish, the more I am convinced that the way that Spanish (and languages in general) are often taught is probably the shabbiest and least effective way to actually learn to use the language. Namely, the focus tends to be on learning grammar 'rules' at the expense of actually taking the time to sit and listen to the language as it is spoken in context.
While I don't find anything trivial about the study of grammar (I actually quite enjoy it), I think that if one's goal is to actually achieve any sort of proficiency in the language, studying grammar before spending any significant amount of time listening and absorbing the language is a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
When I think of all the 1st year and 2nd year high school Spanish students who can barely string together three words in a sentence without fumbling and stumbling over grammar rules and conjugation charts, not to mention the atrocious accents, it makes me wonder what purpose it serves to have kids take two years of a language when probably 95% of the time the best you can usually expect is that the kid comes out knowing how to say rundown expressions like "me gusta al fútbol americano" or "Yo quiero Taco Bell." (It reminds me of these videos: First Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song and Second Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song—the sad thing is that the repertoire of Spanish used in these songs is probably pretty close to the level of proficiency that most high school students will achieve after a year of Spanish)
Now just imagine if this same two years were spent actually speaking to the kids, showing them things, performing demonstrations, drawing pictures, acting out skits, reading picture books aloud, reciting the alphabet, practicing spelling or dictation, engaging the students all the while speaking, speaking, speaking, always speaking—in Spanish. Again, that's not to say that learning a language means foregoing the study of grammar completely, but why not wait until it can be taught the way that it is taught to young children. In other words, why not wait until the student understands the language well enough that the grammar can be taught in the target language.
I have heard 2, 3 and 4 year olds with a better command of the Spanish language than some high school seniors who have taken Spanish for 4+ years. Is it that the younger children are more intelligent than the older children? Not many people in there right mind would contend this, so there must be something in the differing methodologies that lends itself to better learning. In my own personal experience, each of my six children was starting to speak between the age of seven and twelve months; moreover, by the age of two, they were all able to speak well enough to ask for anything that they needed and make there needs and basic feeling understood verbally. All this without ever handing them a list of vocabulary words to study or without giving them a list of irregular verbs to conjugate. They didn't learn to speak by following complicated grammar rules. They learned by listening to scores of thousands of examples spoken in context and, once they felt comfortable, trying to imitate these examples.
Unfortunately, not everybody has access to imaginative teachers, tutors, family members, friends, etc who have both the patience and creativity to teach in this way, and instead most of us are relegated to studying dusty old tomes which are essentially just passed down versions of even dustier old tomes which teach us by way of monotonous verb conjugation charts, endless vocabulary lists to memorize with no context to put them in, and imperfect mnemonic devices and acronyms like W.I.E.R.D.O., RED Touch Down PGC, P.E.R.F.E.C.T., The 4A Rule, P.R.O.D.D.S and D.R.E.E.M.S., D.O.C.T.O.R. and P.L.A.C.E..
It's no wonder that, after swimming through all this alphabet soup, so many people are left with their heads swimming, tongue tied and barely able to stammer the words, "H-h-h-o-l-a, me llamo _______." That is, if anything comes out at all.
Ah, well. Such is life.
It stands for random 6 rules you will not be able to recall and apply quick enough to make a sentence in a real conversation, which have too many "exceptions" to be useful.
I completely agree. I'm getting a pretty good hang of subjunctive use, yet I had to look up the W.E.I.R.D.O. rule yesterday, and I still don't get it.
There is no way someone could apply that rule in the middle of a conversation.
lazarus1907 wrote:
Unless you make sense of the subjunctive (hard thing, with so much rubbish published about it), or you learn it by intuition (and let your brain do the learning, instead of following bad rules), you'll struggle all your life with a mood that no native baby has ever made a mistake on. I mean, babies never ever make mistakes with either subjunctive, por/para or ser/estar. Never! They make countless mistakes, such as conjugating regular verbs (e.g. rompido instead of roto, veído instead of visto), and many other topics where natives keep making "mistakes", but not on those ones. How come? Because they are logical! The logic most books hide behind their crappy rules. How else could they get 100% of all sentences right all the time? Magic? Black magic? I find it more reasonable to assume that there is a logic (I personally see the logic).
Forgive me for this, but..... I wish there was a box I could stand on and shout AMEN! When I heard 8 and 9 year old children (native Spanish speaking children) perfectly using the subjunctive, and I knew they had never had a grammar lesson in their life, I was convinced forever.
Sorry, I don't agree about native users correctly using the subjunctive. My grammar teacher in Spain where I was taking graduate work would misuse it all the time. I.E. Dudo que puedes ayudarme en vez de Dudo que puedas ayudarme. etc. What I mean is that many times I would hear her and other spanish speakers not using or using the subjunctive when we are told to use it or not use it i would correct her casually and she would answer something like"Well maybe I'm not doubting so much. Aside from that many people who are native speakers from whatever Hispanic country will not use the subjunctive correctly because they simply don't know the grammar rules that are listed and they will err just as we do in English. Sure babies can use the subjunctive but ,of course, they will use it incorrectly at times too
You may go along with Noam Chomsky's ideas of deep grammar stating that we are born prewired with a facility to learn language much easier than when we are adults because this ability is is lost as we grow older.
I personally don't agree with Chomsky on that at all. Children listen to "correct" English (as "correct" as the ones their parents speak, that is) for at least 18 months on average before they start to speak, and they don't make use of all complex resources of the language until much later (again, on average). There are lots of studies where people have tracked their own children on a day by day basis, and studied the development of the language. Very interesting reading, by the way.
My belief is that kids usually learn faster than adults because they have the opportunity to listen and speak the language much more than the adults.
I agree with you on this. I don't even believe children learn faster than adults. Before they are fluent, they have listen to at least 7000 hours of the language in context, without wasting time trying to memorize grammatical rules they wouldn't be able to recall, and more importantly, without the fear and stress of making mistakes because of not having to apply the correct grammatical rule. With fear, stress and lack of motivation, one learns much much slower than without them. How many adults fully motivated, without any fear to speak in front of natives, who have spent 7000 hours of listening in context do you know who don't speak perfect Spanish? With those conditions, an adult will need half of that. Pronunciation and intonation is another story, because the proper wiring in the brain for sounds takes place in the first few years of life, and acquiring it later takes much more effort.
Native speakers,babies included ,of course, can handle the subjunctive not necessarily better but more fluent than someone learning the language who is not a native. You may go along with Noam Chomsky's ideas of deep grammar stating that we are born prewired with a facility to learn language much easier than when we are adults because this ability is is lost as we grow older. My belief is that kids usually learn faster than adults because they have the opportunity to listen and speak the language much more than the adults. In a classroom setting it is not possible to be emmersed in a language 24/7 as children who live in a family setting. With the students I have from Russian who have just come here, they start off knowing no English and in one or two years are speaking it fluently.(I teach at a high school level) It is because they are emersed in a language setting : all there classes are in English as well as listening to English all the time on T.V. and with their friends who love to speak to them. On the other hand, their parents usually don't learn to speak English as fluently as their kids for many years. Often they never are able to master the language. One other thing. If you know a language well and begiin to learn another language ,often times. the subconscience has a difficult time saying wait a minute this is not right. I have learned to speak using the rules of my own language and this new language has to be wrong!
