Swedish subjunctive

[Brazilian dude]

Är is also am.

Brazilian dude

[tcward]

I would probably say "be".

And I meant only to indicate to Miku how the translation lined up, so he would see where the parts of the sentence in Swedish corresponded to English, and I happened to use the subjunctive, since that's what we were talking about in the first place. I didn't mean to indicate that är translates into be, which I believe Henri pointed out would be vare in Swedish. My apologies for the confusion.

-Tim

[M. Henri Day]

...
To clarify, är is "is/are", and perfectly indicative.

Or, perhaps, presently indicative ?...

Henri

[Apoclima]

Swedish doesn't really conjugate in the present tense, does it?

I thought you all decided democratically long-gago!

Apo!

[miku.]

I would probably say "be".

And I meant only to indicate to Miku how the translation lined up, so he would see where the parts of the sentence in Swedish corresponded to English

Thank you tcward, I was asking two explanations

[anders]

Swedish doesn't really conjugate in the present tense, does it?

I thought you all decided democratically long-gago!

Apo!

It's more a question of equality and egalitarianism among words than democracy.

All Swedish verbs make do with one form only for each tense, irrespectively of person, number, gender. The principal parts are, however, sometimes irregular. For simplicity, I find Swedish matched by Danish and Norwegian among IE languages, the three Scandinavians being only marginally more complex than Afrikaans.

The Afrikaans verb is remarkably regular, and as it is no respecter of persons and numbers, and also shoots the rapids of mood, voice and tense without turning as much as a vowel, one can tell its conjugation at sight. At most the main verb takes on the prefix ge- in the past tense and the passive voice. Consider the typical verb om te bring, to bring:

Ek bring koffie (I bring coffee) becomes in the future tenses ek sal koffie bring (I shall bring coffee) and ek sal koffie gebring het (I shall have brought coffee). In the past tenses ek het koffie gebring does duty for the three English forms "I brought coffee", "I have brought coffee," and "I had brought coffee". This causes no confusion, as we have axiliaries, and "time words" [...] and the context withal, to stand by the constant verb.

[Iterman]

Byråkraterna talar i imperativ, så ock agitatorerna.
Ingenjörerna talar i indikativ, så ock ombudsmännen.
De som ville att konjunktiven bestode, om möjligt vore, måtte ej vara många.

Alf Henriksson

[M. Henri Day]

Tack, Iterman (och Alf Henriksson) !

Henri

[anders]

Among us subjunctive-huggers, it is not so much a question of quantity (många = "many") but quality, in the way so admirably displayed by, for example, Henri and Iterman.