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

[muckefuck]

Context?

[miconazole]

"Do you want to go to Disneyland?"
"Are you going to Disneyland?"

I'm not sure context is enough.

[miconazole]

Though maybe Croatians are just that hardcore.

[muckefuck]

I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate here. Not context, surely. There's a great deal that informs even a simple speech act--the time and setting, the relationship between the participants, their background knowledge and expectations, the flow of conversation up to that point, and so forth. Not a bit of that is included in your example.

[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".

[typesbad]

so for 'are you going to disneyland' you wouldn't use the future to be + li?

I'm just thinking of phrases I might say in Russian in this... "context". hopefully some natives will show up!

[muckefuck]

This is used to form the "future exact", also called the "conditional". The htjeti form is also called "future 1" or the "intentional". From this I surmise that the usage may be roughly parallel to to that between the modal constructions with "will" and "be going to" in English, but that's only a guess.

[typesbad]

hm, I clicked on the balkan sprachbund link to get a little idea of what you're talking about. but I can't really express what I'm thinking here. there is something that li adds to the sentence when you ask with to be or to want in general, right? the difference between just flat out asking, are you going to disneyland? or aren't you going to go to disneyland? not sure how to get the point across.

but now I'm thinking strictly russian. since the phrase looked familiar I thought the grammar might be - but there you go ;)). oops

[gavinoftheufo]

I think the issue here is the apparent ambiguity in English where the "going" in "Are you going to Disneyland" may imply futurity or the continuous aspect, though rarely the latter. I think I'm correct in assuming that the said Croatian auxiliary is used for wishes and futurity, and that there is no reason to believe such an ambiguity with the continuous aspect would exist, which is why the OP ignored it.

Xe probably should have said:

Do you want to go to Disneyland?
Are you going to go to Disneyland?

Unless, of course, the same ambiguities exist in Croatian, then everything I just wrote probably doesn't make sense. I think?

[anonymous]

Yeah, there's a simple answer: use "željeti" instead of "htjeti" when talking about wishes if you want to be sure about it. Using only "htjeti" it's mostly obvious from the context though, so don't worry about it.

[taciturnsilence]

Ah this is interesting! :) Even though I'm a native speaker, I've never even thought about this... I really do think that context determines the difference in the end. But I agree that if you want to make sure to be understood, you could use "željeti" to ask if they "wish to go" :D Gah sorry I'm not much help!

[miconazole]

Lol hlo thar. If you've never even thought about it I'll take it as a good sign! I think.

[taciturnsilence]

Hehe you should! :3 I wouldn't worry about it if I were you :) Ah by the way how have you been doing?! :D

[muckefuck]

Here's a question: htjeti has both a set of full forms (hoću, hoćeš, hoće, etc.) and a set of "clitics" (ću, ćeš, će, etc.) which can only appear attached to another word. Is the meaning the same in both cases? That is, can izlaziću mean both "I'm going out" and "I want to go out" or only "I'm going out"?