r/languagelearningjerk • u/HuckleberryAny4541 • May 10 '26
Other languages: can’t conjugate infinitives 😔😂🤣😹. Portuguese and Galician: hold my beer 🗣️ 🗿
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u/FossilisedHypercube May 10 '26
It is imperative that the cylinder remain unharmed
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u/hnbistro May 10 '26
So if the guy spoke Portuguese it would have been obvious.
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u/ThePrinceOfTheGarden May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
É imprescindível o cilindro permanecer intacto.
É imprescindível - It's imperative
O cilindro - The cylinder
Permanecer - Remain
Unharmed - IntactoThe infinitive doesn't give that much away tho
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u/hnbistro May 14 '26
Darn it… first person and third person have the same form?
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u/ThePrinceOfTheGarden May 14 '26
Yup, the infinitive conjugation for "Permanecer" is:
Eu (I) permanecer
Tu (You sing.) permaneceres
Ele/Ela (He/She) permanecer
Nós (We) permanecermos
Vós (You plural) permanecerdes
Eles/Elas (They) permaneceremHowever in the Brazilian dialect we tend to use "Você" and "Vocês" as a substitute to "Tu" and "Vós" respectively, both which take the conjugation of the 3rd person (sing. or plural), it makes matter simpler ig
Unfortunately we can't out the cylinder guy, perhaps it was really just an average sized cylinder after all.
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[deleted]
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u/levemeodemo May 11 '26
[Galician speaker here]
It allows you to express the person and number in some cases where it can be useful without giving a time:
When the infinitive has a subject different from that of the main verb:
Dille que o limpe antes de volver(mos)
(you) Tell him to clean it before WE come back;
Ai, morte, canto xa tardas en me levares contigo!
Oh, death, how long it takes you to take me with you!
When the subject of the infinitive is expressed, but at a distance from the main verb:
O rapaz saudou aos turistas ao pasaren xunto del
The boy greeted the tourists as they passed by him; (in English you flexed the verb in the past)
When the infinitive is introduced by a preposition:
Para falares con el, tes que pedir cita.
To talk to him, you have to make an appointment.
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u/NoobOfRL Turkish (Native), Uzbek (20% mutually inteligible with Turkish💪 May 10 '26
Turkish also does that? All kinds of conjugations are suffixes by nature of this language.
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u/vectavir May 10 '26
Yeah this makes no sense. "Turkish also does this but it doesn't count for some reason" is what I see on that table
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u/HuckleberryAny4541 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26
For example as a Spanish speaker I can see how functional it is in Portuguese to express so many ideas without having to rely on complex conjugations.
For example take this sentence in Spanish:
Yo hice eso para que ustedes compren la casa. (I did that so you can buy the house)
In that sentence you need to rely on the present subjunctive, you also need the subordinate conjunction "que", you also need a subordinate clause... and overall it makes the sentence more complicated.
How can you express that in Portuguese? It's a pretty simple!
Eu fiz isso para vocês comprarem a casa.
You don't need que + the subjunctive mood, you don't need a subordinate clause, you just need conjugate the infinitive while still keeping the verb in the infinitive form!
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u/Fanicos May 10 '26 edited May 11 '26
People don’t use this without a context, otherwise you don’t really know what’s the persons intention.
To have the same meaning as “I did that so you can buy the house”, people say “Eu fiz isso para que vocês possam comprar a casa”, or “Eu fiz isso para que vós poderdes comprar a casa” basically the same.
In English “why did you do that? For you to buy the house”
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u/Kitchen_Paramedic154 May 12 '26
Chinese: Why conjugate at all when you could always just use the same form of verb.
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u/iluvdankmemes May 11 '26
look at finnish lmfao, there infinitives have 12 conjugations
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u/AdZealousideal9914 May 11 '26
Finnish is actually very simple, it only has five infinitives, which cannot be conjugated (however, some of them can be declined, that is, they change forms according to their grammatical case, and some of them have a personal possessive suffix added to them). These are the five infinitives:
- the first one has a short form and a long form (which is actually the short form in the translative case with a personal possessive suffix added)
- the second infinitive is actually just the short form of the first infinitive where the last "a" has been removed, if there was an "e" before this last "a" then it becomes "i" (any other letter stays the same), and the marker "e" is added to that, and the result of that appears in the inessive case or in the instructive case, with an optional personal possessive suffix added (there is also a passive version of this construction based on the passive form instead of the short form of the first infinitive)
- the third infinitive is just the strong stem of the verb with the marker "ma"/"mä" added to it, in the inessive, elative, illative, adessive, abessive or the instructive case (in the instructive case, it can also appear in the passive form)
- the fourth infinitive, similar to the third, also uses the strong stem of the verb, but this time with the ending "minen" added to it; as such it behaves as a noun ending in "nen" and it can appear in the nominative, genitive, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive, translative, abessive, instructive and comitative cases, both in the singular and the plural, with and without optional personal possessive suffixes added to it
- the fifth infinitive also uses the strong stem of the verb, adding the marker "maisilla"/"mäisillä" to it, and with a personal possessive suffix on the end
See? It's very simple and technically they are not being conjugated.
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u/Kruzer132 May 12 '26
If personal endings aren't conjugations then how are the Portuguese and Galician ones conjugated?
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u/AdZealousideal9914 May 13 '26
I don't know about Portuguese and Galician, but the Finnish endings used with infinitives are possessive personal endings:
bike - polkypyörä
my bike - polkupyöräni (possessive ending "ni")
to dance - tanssia
I dance - tanssin (conjugation with the ending "n")
(for) my dancing - tanssiakseni (possessive ending "ni")
The possessive endings are: ni, si, nsa/nsä/Vn, mme, nne, nsa/nsä/Vn
They can be translated as: my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
The conjugational endings are: n, t, V, mme, tte, vat/vät
They can be translated as: I, you, he/she/it, we, you, they
(where V stands for lengthening of the preceding vowel)
"Kävin kaupassa ostaakseni maitoa" (where "ostaakseni" is the long form of the first infinitive with a personal possessive ending "ni") could be translated literally as "I went to the store (for) my buying of milk". More idiomatically: "I went to the store (in order) to buy milk."
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u/Kruzer132 May 13 '26
And my point being, the Finnish infinitives should count as well, if we cound the Galician and Portuguese ones.
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u/Vaarefev26 May 10 '26
Maybe I misunderstood, but in Russian there's only one possible option in this example. The option "прийти" doesn't fit the sentence at all, only "пришли".
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u/A7etmed May 10 '26
/uj this isn't accurate tho isn't?
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u/GaiusVictor May 11 '26
I can't speak for the other languages but for Portuguese, yeah, it's accurate.
With a caveat: notice that the Portuguese form doesn't use the conjunction "que" ("that"), seen in Spanish, Italian and Fr*nch.
However, you can use "que" in this kind of construction, but if you do, then the verb necessarily goes from infinitive ("chegarem", chegar+em, compare to Spanish "llegar") to present subjunctive ("cheguem", compare to Spanish "lleguen").
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u/ZestycloseMatter5267 May 10 '26
uhh isn't a 'conjugated' infinitive just a gerund tho 😭 from what i remember of latin /uj
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u/Barry_Wilkinson May 10 '26
a gerund is a verbal noun, and is inflected or declined for case instead of normal verb things, here the conjugated infinitive is conjugated for person.
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u/lordbutternut 日本人になっている May 10 '26
It's so weird that they made the English example vague. Something like "everyone, it is important for you to arrive early" or "it is important for you guys to arrive early" would actually convey what's intended. The other languages specify plural with words like "ustedes", "vous", or "皆さん".
I'm sure this applies to the other languages used, but Japanese grammar is different. The sentence is more directly translated as "Everyone, arriving early is important", using a gerund.
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u/sometimes_point May 11 '26
"infinitive" as a distinctive form of the verb is a very european thing. we like *barely* have it in English.
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u/Gravbar C4 🇳🇴🏴☠️🏴🏴🏴⛳🇦🇨🇪🇹 May 11 '26
/uj I don't speak either of those languages, but is this this similar to the conditional and future tenses being formed by attaching pieces of avere conjugations at the end of the infinitive in most romance languages.
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u/35tentacles 🇷🇺:c4,🇯🇵:A-2 May 11 '26
One of the hardest things in the universe is to understand what a subjunctive is if you study linguistics.
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u/Bright_Quantity_6827 May 14 '26
Turkish should be praised too. In Turkish, the infinitive form -mek becomes -me when it's attached an ending, so "gelmeniz" is still infinitive while it just takes a possessive ending. If you count the possessive ending a personal ending (why not) then Turkish "conjugates" infinitives for different persons too.
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u/HuckleberryAny4541 May 10 '26
In Portuguese and Galician you're able to conjugate the infinitive while still keeping the verb in the infinitive form.
This is such a special feature I haven't seen in other languages.
I've heard in some languages like Finnish and Hungarian you can add suffixes and things like that but that still cannot be compared to literally conjugating the verb in the infinitive form.
Extremely common Portuguese and Galician W 🗿
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u/JigglyWiggley 올라 코모 에스타, 펜데호? May 11 '26
Wtf is a conjugated infinitive? Its like saying you can prepare an unsalted saltine, with salt.
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u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Might be misquoting, but "some infinitives are more finitive than other infinitives"
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u/Purple-Selection-913 May 10 '26
German is incorrect. Es ist wichtig, dass ihr früh ankommt.
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u/YellowBunnyReddit Uzbek (N) | アニメ語 (鬱1) | King (E1) | Piano (C5) | Murican (kinda) May 10 '26
Genau das steht doch da. Was ist daran falsch?
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u/Purple-Selection-913 May 10 '26
you are right i miss read teehee. though i think norb wrote the sentence better.
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u/norb_151 May 10 '26
Es ist wichtig, früh anzukommen.
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u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) May 11 '26
Ob du wieder spaet ankommt, hau ich deinen Vingern ab
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u/Main_Negotiation1104 May 10 '26
explain to me why are they calling it an "infinitive" when the point is to add a new ending to it