Dijese
I was reading about the novel Zorro, and came across this sentence.
Pero el amor, ¡Oh el amor! florece en el corazón del capitán Alejandro de la Vega y se casa con Regina (ya civilizada) sin importarle lo que dijese su familia y la sociedad...
The whole description of the novel is written in the historic present tense, meaning that they use the present tense to describe past actions (as with "florece" and "se casa" above), but I see that the past subjunctive is used (as in "dijese").
Is this a rule of grammar? Since the present tense is being used, I would have expected it to say "sin importarle lo que diga su familia."
6 Answers
Got it. Thanks!
These agreement rules are complex... and subjective at times. In my opinion, both singular and plural agreement are perfectly acceptable here.
If the coordinated items are seen as disconnected, the plural agreement is expected, but if the items are somehow related, or forming part of one idea which is seen from many different perspectives, the singular agreement is used to show this. This criterion is quite subjective, of course, but the choice subtly modifies the way the sentence is understood. Also, there is a slight preference to use the singular agreement when the coordinated subject appears after the verb, like in "Me gusta el vino y la cerveza", where singular is preferred, but in "El vino y la cerveza me gustan" almost no one would use the singular agreement.
This behaviour seems parallel to the evolution of English, which has virtually turned almost all "reverse" constructions (such as the old English "gustar", which used to be used like the Spanish one) into a prototypical "main actor" + verb + "objects", where these objects can easily be in plural while the subject and the verb remain singular, of course.
May I add a follow-up question?
You will notice that in my translation, "say" is in the plural form, because it agrees with "family and society." Is there a rule in Spanish covering why the singular is used here? That is, why dijese (or diga) is used rather than dijesen (or digan).
Is it that, despite the use of "y," each of the nouns is treated singularly and agrees with the verb independently, as if the "y" were "o"'
James Santiago said:
Ah, interesting. I don't think it would be possible to convey that nuance in an English translation. ...regardless of what his family and society (may) say...
The subjunctive is most likely unnecessary in many circumstances, from a practical point of view, and admittedly a pain to learn, but it can be sometimes very powerful to convey nuances that would be otherwise difficult to express so concisely.
Ah, interesting. I don't think it would be possible to convey that nuance in an English translation.
...regardless of what his family and society (may) say...
...regardless of what his family and society (may) have said...
3-9 (say it in Japanese)
"Diga" would have been fine here too, but "dijese" applies not just to whatever they may say in the future, but also to what they maybe have said before.
