A Tense Situation
I just read something on Facebook that reminded me of a quirky expression I've heard a number of times recently--always among people who have a Pennsylvania Dutch background. On Facebook, someone was trying to date when a photo was taken, and said "It would have been . . . . [a certain time], or then it would have been . . . [at a different time]."
The tense of "would have been" appears to be the past perfect conditional tense. Glad you asked. One website describes this usage this way: We use the perfect conditional tense in English (I would have been/done etc.) to speculate about the past situations which were theoretically possible, but did not happen in fact.The only problem is that the person writing on Facebook did not mean to express doubt about the fact of the "happening" (when the picture was taken). She wasn't certain about the time though. That makes the Dutchified expression a variation on this already unusual tense.
For the Facebook person's purposes, "would have been" could very simply have been replaced by "was." "It was . . . [at a certain time], or it was [at a different time]."
The "or then" is an additional quirk. The easiest way to fix this problem is to omit "then." "Either" could also be inserted near the beginning of the sentence.
"Would have been" occurs among "Dutch" people in other usages such as:
"He would have been my second cousin."
"I would have been the second child in my family."
"I would have been in grade school when my grandmother died."
In every case, "was" should replace "would have been" and all would be well. Or is that "all would have been well?"
Searching for a motive or explanation for the strange expression is probably fruitless, but I suspect using tentative terms such as "would have been" instead of decisive ones like "was" simply feels better to people who are used to cultivating caution and humility. Maybe it's a literal translation of an expression I'm not that familiar with in Dutch either.
For example:
Ow vwah maa second cousin gvest. (I don't have a clue how to spell these words.)
Ich vwah 'ss tsvet kint in dee family gvest.
Ich vwah in grade schul gvest voe maa grussmommy kshtarva iss.
I'm used to saying:
Ow vwa maa second cousin.
Ich vwah 'ss tsvet kint in dee family.
Ich vwah in grade schul voe maa grussmommy kshtarva iss.
Now that I've written it out, I see that what I'm doing in the second set of Dutch sentences is omitting "gvest" in each one. "Gvest" must be the equivalent to "would have been."
I'm glad we got that settled.
Does it all make sense to you?
The tense of "would have been" appears to be the past perfect conditional tense. Glad you asked. One website describes this usage this way: We use the perfect conditional tense in English (I would have been/done etc.) to speculate about the past situations which were theoretically possible, but did not happen in fact.The only problem is that the person writing on Facebook did not mean to express doubt about the fact of the "happening" (when the picture was taken). She wasn't certain about the time though. That makes the Dutchified expression a variation on this already unusual tense.
For the Facebook person's purposes, "would have been" could very simply have been replaced by "was." "It was . . . [at a certain time], or it was [at a different time]."
The "or then" is an additional quirk. The easiest way to fix this problem is to omit "then." "Either" could also be inserted near the beginning of the sentence.
"Would have been" occurs among "Dutch" people in other usages such as:
"He would have been my second cousin."
"I would have been the second child in my family."
"I would have been in grade school when my grandmother died."
In every case, "was" should replace "would have been" and all would be well. Or is that "all would have been well?"
Searching for a motive or explanation for the strange expression is probably fruitless, but I suspect using tentative terms such as "would have been" instead of decisive ones like "was" simply feels better to people who are used to cultivating caution and humility. Maybe it's a literal translation of an expression I'm not that familiar with in Dutch either.
For example:
Ow vwah maa second cousin gvest. (I don't have a clue how to spell these words.)
Ich vwah 'ss tsvet kint in dee family gvest.
Ich vwah in grade schul gvest voe maa grussmommy kshtarva iss.
I'm used to saying:
Ow vwa maa second cousin.
Ich vwah 'ss tsvet kint in dee family.
Ich vwah in grade schul voe maa grussmommy kshtarva iss.
Now that I've written it out, I see that what I'm doing in the second set of Dutch sentences is omitting "gvest" in each one. "Gvest" must be the equivalent to "would have been."
I'm glad we got that settled.
Does it all make sense to you?
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
6:25 PM
7 Comments:
Well said! This "would have been" has bothered me for a long time.
By
MaryAnn, at 10/04/2012
This looks to me like a simple case of an incorrect translation of a different grammatical practice in German and by extension, Penn. Dutch...the perfect tense (helping verb plus participle) is used almost exclusively for the past tense in spoken German in the southern language area. (including the areas Pennsylvania Dutch came from) Hence the first Dutch expression is correct for spoken language. Its literally translation in English is "was being", however, not "would have been" as our acquaintances mistranslate it in their second language. :)
By
Unknown, at 10/05/2012
Very well said.
Whose child would you be? (if you were anyone's child)
Examples in Dutch, the way I say it:
Ich bin 'ss drit kint in dee family.
I am the third child in the family.
Er ist (iss) maa second cousin.
By
Kathy Beachy, at 10/05/2012
Kathy, I think I say it the way you said it--not the way I wrote it above, in the past tense. "Ich bin 'ss zvet kint in die family."
To Unknown--You obviously have more knowledge of German speech and grammar than I do. Thanks for posting. I think I'm still a little confused though. Can you clarify further on "was being?" It looks like past progressive to me. "Had been" is my guess for past perfect tense.
By
Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige), at 10/05/2012
Just for the record, that Kathy Beachy post was my husband, Wil's post. I wouldn't have a clue how that should be written:) He thought he was posting from his own account.
By
Kathy Beachy, at 10/06/2012
Okay, I'm Unknown, thought posting it by signing in to my Gmail would show the name on my email, Jadon C. Nisly...oh well...
Yeah, as soon as I posted I realized that "was being" was also an incorrect translation...
The simple issue here is, there is NO progressive tense in German...very frustrating that until you learn which adjectives to use with your present or past verbs.
This lack of progressive verbs combined with the German perfect tense being much more versatile than the English one means its impossible to translate...actually "was been" would be more accurate (not "had been" because German verbs that indicate a change in position or condition MUST use "be" as a helping verb rather than "have")
one final note, the Dutch examples given are actually in past perfect for reasons I'll attribute to the dialect, in standard German it would be just perfect tense: bin gewesen instead of war gewesen (literally am been instead of was been).
One of many reasons English can sound adorably dutchy when spoken by Penn. Dutch native speakers who are translating in their heads.
By
Jadon Nisly, at 10/07/2012
Thanks for weighing in Jadon. I don't know much about the mechanics of other languages, but suspected that there is seldom a one-to-one correspondence in tenses across languages. Your comment clears up some of that.
I sometimes catch Dutchy expressions in my students' writing, and try to suggest a standard English expression, but I wonder how many such expressions I use unconsciously myself.
By
Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige), at 10/08/2012
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