Croatian: wtf?

[miconazole]

I bet (or hope) there's an extremely simple answer for this, but "htjeti" is both "to want" and the auxiliary for future tense, right? So if I were to ask someone "hoćeš li ti " how would they know if I was asking them if they wanted to do something, or if they were going to? :\

Comments

[ubykhlives]

Although I don't speak Croatian, I got quite intrigued by this, because in Ubykh the verb for "to want" is also the usual auxiliary of necessity, and the correct meaning depends entirely upon context: there's no grammatical distinction between he wants you to eat and you should eat, both awfawtən q’aʂaʁ. In some forms of English (Irish English, I think, along with some other varieties) a similar thing happens: you want to be careful is synonymous with you should be careful. And the English future auxiliary will also historically derives from the Old English verb willan to want, to desire, which acted as a future auxiliary. Apparently literary Farsi and Nubian both also express future tense with "to want" as an auxiliary

[miconazole]

Intriguing! I didn't know that about other languages using want as an auxiliary. Do you have any examples?

It seems strange though, since there's a rather important distinction between planning to do something and wanting to do something! Though maybe they're not that different in practical terms.

[kaji_sensei]

Chinese also uses 要 (yāo) for to want and to need, if I recall correctly. Once again, context.

[muckefuck]

And also simple future, e.g. 要下雨了 yāo xià yǔ le "It's going to rain".

[muckefuck]

This is a feature of the Balkan Sprachbund, and as such found in Albanian, Greek, and Rumanian in addition to the South Slavic languages.

[pne]

Though as the article mentions, the two are no longer the same in all languages, with the future particle being uninflected in some of them.

[wiped]

actually using "to want" to express future tense is employed in both colloquial as well as literary persian, albeit differently. in colloquial persian, saying "i want to go" (می‌خواهم بروم) can mean either that or "i will go," depending on context. however, in literary/formal persian there is a future tense not used in spoken persian (equivalent to "i shall" in english) that is derived from the same verb as "to want" (خواستن), but there is no ambiguity; "i shall go" (خواهم رفت) means just that, nothing else.

i hope that wasn't altogether too confusing!

[oh_meow]

I'd say that "You want to be careful, you do" = "you should be careful"

[gavinoftheufo]

Is, "You want to be careful with that," not natural in your dialect?