# she would say



## Noel Oderfla

From the book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain.

"Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson *would *say, ‘Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;’ and ‘Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry — set up straight;’ and pretty soon she *would *say, ‘Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry — why don’t you try to be- have?’ Then she *told *me all about the bad place, and I *said *I *wished *I *was *there. "

Toda la narración está en pasado, sin embargo en dos oraciones hace uso de "would", mientras que en el resto usa el pasado "común y corriente".
No encuentro un patrón para determinar cuándo utiliza "would" para hablar en pasado. 
¿Cuándo se utiliza y cómo se entiende?

Otro ejemplo, de una canción: Cotton Fields by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
"When I was a little bitty baby my mama *would *rock me in the craddle, in them old cotton fields back home..."


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## Peterdg

En este caso, "would" significa más o menos "solía".


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## flljob

Se traduciría como un imperfecto: Miss Watson decía...


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## blasita

As the other two foreros say, _*would*_ *in the past* (past of 'will') is used to talk about *typical behaviour*, *repeated past events and actions in the past* (_would say/would rock me_); both 'used to' and 'would' are possible here. But 'would' can't be used to refer to past states (to describe past states you can only use 'used to').

Esta es solamente una pequeña referencia. En fin, mi opinión.


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## Dlyons

It's a Future event as seen from that time in the past.

[Edit] No it's not - I misread it


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## blasita

Dlyons said:


> It's a Future event as seen from that time in the past.



Could you please explain it a bit more, please? I don't understand what you mean. Thanks.


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## inib

Dlyons said:


> It's a Future event as seen from that time in the past.


I think that would apply to many uses of the conditional tense, but not particularly to this one which talks about past habits.


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## Noel Oderfla

Dlyons said:


> It's a Future event as seen from that time in the past.


It's like:
She said: "I *will *do it"  /  She said she *would *do it. Right?
But I think it's not the case of Twain's paragraph.


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## inib

Noel Oderfla said:


> It's like:
> She said: "I *will *do it" / She said she *would *do it. Right?
> But I think it's not the case of Twain's paragraph.


Exactly!


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## TwoSnowflakes

I'm leaning towards indefinite as well: decía.  "Would" is expressing a sense of "used to" rather than the conditional.  But the last one is actually one of the few uses of subjunctive in English, right? It's not written that way, but I feel like I might translate it into Spanish with that form:

Dije que deseaba que fuera allí.


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## Noel Oderfla

TwoSnowflakes said:


> I'm leaning towards indefinite as well: decía.  "Would" is expressing a sense of "used to" rather than the conditional.  But the last one is actually one of the few uses of subjunctive in English, right? It's not written that way, but I feel like I might translate it into Spanish with that form:
> 
> Dije que deseaba que fuera allí.


No. Se dice así: "Dije que desearía estar ahí". No es una traducción literal, pero es la forma como decimos en español.
Literalmente: "Dije que deseaba que *estuviera *ahí." (Uno puede "estar" en un lugar, no "ser" en un lugar )


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## TwoSnowflakes

Ah, vale, entiendo!  Gracias. Poco a poco, aprendo más de las formas complicadas!  Siempre puedo entender la lengua escrita, pero no puedo construir una frase correcta nunca!  Jajajaja!


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## vertebrado

soy espanol y despues de leer todas las opiniones sigo sin tenerlo claro. Yo tambien tengo la misma duda que Noel Odefla pues me aparece muchas veces esa construccion en un libro y aunque se entiende el significado general queda confusa su interpretacion exacta.

Creo que una forma de entenderlo con claridad seria que alguien perfectamente bilingue hiciera una traduccion de todo el parrafo que ha escrito Noel Oderfla: 



> From the book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain.
> 
> "Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson *would say, ‘Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;’ and ‘Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry — set up straight;’ and pretty soon she would say, ‘Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry — why don’t you try to be- have?’ Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. "
> *




a ver como quedaria en espanol y a partir de ahi sacar nuestras propias conclusiones.

Me parece un hilo muy interesante, saludos!  y a ver quien es el valiente que lo traduce, jeje.


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## SevenDays

El "would" en la canción de CCR conllleva el sentido de "soler" (_solía_), pero no el "would" de Twain. En su narración, "would" viene a ser nuestro "decía", que al usarlo da un sentido _imperfecto _al dialogo. Con "_Miss Watson *said*_", la descripción queda con una sensación estática, _puntual, _propia del pasado simple. Con "*would say*", Twain presenta la acción, lo dicho por Miss Watson, con el efecto típico del imperfecto: en su _duración _(y así las palabras de Miss Watson, me parece, adquieren mayor expresividad). Es un recurso literario que en las manos de un maestro enquirece la narración.

¿Y para traducirlo? Quizás ...

_Miss Watson me decía, "No pongas los pies ahí, Huckleberry" y "No te eches así en la silla, Huckleberry, hay que sentarse bien; y ya al ratito seguía con "cierra esa boca y no te estires de esa manera, Huckleberry -- ¿por qué no tratas de portarte bien? Y entonces me contó todo lo de ese lugar malo, y le dije que me gustaría estar ahí._

O algo por el estilo; no es nada fácil captar el lenguaje coloquial que le llegaba con tanta facilidad a Twain.

Saludos


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## duvija

Yo sí creo que es el 'habitual _would_'. En el primer caso, podemos traducirlo por 'solía decirme...' y en el segundo, por 'seguía diciendo'.


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## Noel Oderfla

TwoSnowflakes said:


> Ah, vale, entiendo!  Gracias. Poco a poco, aprendo más de las formas complicadas!  Siempre puedo entender la lengua escrita, pero no puedo construir una frase correcta nunca!  Jajajaja!


No! si a mí me pasa lo mismo con el inglés  Pero son detalles que con el tiempo y práctica iremos puliendo.

Creo que ya me quedó claro. Se usa como usamos en español el Pretérito Imperfecto.


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## Forero

Acabo de releer el contexto. Las acciones de esta narrativa se hacen una vez, pero con los _would_s nos indica Huckleberry que estas dichas reflejan la actitud característica de Miss Watson.  Lo podemos "traducir" al tiempo presente así:

"Then for an hour it is deadly dull, and I am fidgety. Miss Watson will say, ‘Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;’ and ‘Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry — set up straight;’ and pretty soon she will say, ‘Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry — why don’t you try to be- have?’ Then she tells me all about the bad place, and I say I wish I was there."

Creo se diría en español con pretérito imperfecto, pero ¿habrá otra manera más coloquial de expresar lo que dice el inglés?


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## Noel Oderfla

O sea, "would" sí es el pasado del futuro.


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## Mexico RV'er

It seems as though this has been covered fairly well, but to simplify a bit, just remember that "would" in English has two possibilities, one of which is used in the past to express a repeated or habitual action. "Would" = "used to" as someone stated above.


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## SevenDays

La "forma" de "would" es pasado (pasado de "will"), pero la "función" de "would" es presentar la narración con todo el matiz *durativo* que el español transmite con el pretérito _*imperfecto.*_ Si bien es cierto que el inglés tiene sólo un pasado (simple past "said", de aspecto perfectivo), Twain nos muestra que hay recursos gramaticales para convertir el pasado en imperfectivo.
Saludos


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## chileno

Noel Oderfla said:


> From the book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain.
> 
> "Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson *would *say, ‘Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;’ and ‘Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry — set up straight;’ and pretty soon she *would *say, ‘Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry — why don’t you try to be- have?’ Then she *told *me all about the bad place, and I *said *I *wished *I *was *there. "
> 
> Toda la narración está en pasado, sin embargo en dos oraciones hace uso de "would", mientras que en el resto usa el pasado "común y corriente".
> No encuentro un patrón para determinar cuándo utiliza "would" para hablar en pasado.
> ¿Cuándo se utiliza y cómo se entiende?
> 
> Otro ejemplo, de una canción: Cotton Fields by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
> "When I was a little bitty baby my mama *would *rock me in the craddle, in them old cotton fields back home..."



Me parece que eres joven. Lo digo porque yo crecí leyendo cuentos donde se describían escenas como esa de Huckleberry Finn.

"Ella diría "no lo hagas" y más tarde añadiría "si lo vuelves a hacer te castigo" etc.


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## Forero

The way I read the Mark Twain passage, "used to" does not fit the context. In context "used to say" would suggest something like "formerly said", whereas "would say" refers to Miss Watson saying "Don't ..." on that particular occasion, while at the same time telling us that Miss Watson always (in Huckleberry's mind anyway) said things like that.


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## duvija

As usual, I'll say that 'would' it's not a past tense at all (although sometimes it may be used as such). But no, it's not the past tense of 'can', and 'might' is not the past tense of 'may', and on and on. They are taught as past tenses just as a short-cut, but they aren't!


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## Noel Oderfla

Got it.


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## Forero

En este caso, sí veo _would_ como tiempo pasado de _will_. Este _will_ dice que Miss Watson está diciendo lo que suele decir:

Presente (historical present): (Here we are.) _She'll say 'Don't scrunch up', .... Next she's telling me all about the bad place and I say I wish I was there._
Pasado: (There we were.) _ She would say 'Don't scrunch up', .... Next she was telling me all about the bad place and I said I wish I was there._

Del contexto original:

... _Miss Watson_ ... _had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. ... Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say_ ... _She got mad then,_ ....

_Now_ me dice que _took a set_ pasó una vez solamente, _for about an hour_ me dice que _worked me middling hard_ fue una vez— es toda una historieta. Miss Watson took ..., then worked me ..., then the widow made her ease up, then it was dull for an hour, then Miss Watson "would say" things, then she got mad.


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## SevenDays

_The case against "would" as verb_
"Would" can't occur with tense morphemes; that is, we can't say "_he would*s*_" (present) or "_she would*ed*"_ (past). And "would" can't take a present-participle morpheme ("_I am would*ing*_").
_The case for past tense "would"_
"Would" is syntactically required in a past-time frame that excludes "will:"
_They will talk for hours_ (future)
_They would talk for hour_s (past, meaning _they tended to talk for hours_)
In Twain's passage, "would" is syntactically required to express *past* time ("would say") when the simple past ("said") is not used for stylistic reasons.
Cheers


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hullo, Mexico.

I beg to disagree on the equation  _"Would" = "used to"_. If you try to substitute "used to" for "would" in Noel's chunk from Twain, you'll soon see you can't go very far.
This is reasonable: although both forms express the notion of "repeated action in the past", we shouldn't underestimate that while _would_ is a modal auxiliary - and as such an expression of the _speaker's point of view -_ _used to_ is the simple past of a _verb_. 
In other words, _used to_ is _factual_ and limits itself to saying what happened- more or less regularly - in the past. _Would_, on the other hand, tells us much more about the Speaker's profound knowledge of the Subject of the sentence, about the Speaker's expectations, and about the natural tendency of the Subject of the sentence to behave in a certain way. 
I also suspect that in Spanish, like in Italian, the best way to render this _would_ is with a ... "pale" _pretérito imperfecto; _"soler" I would keep for _used to_.

Best.

GS


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