# FR: I would have hoped that you would speak to me



## Livydarling

Any help with the tenses for this phrase. My attempt:

J'aurais éspéré que tu m'en parlerais/m'en aurait parlé.....

Many thanks in advance.


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## Oddmania

Hi,

None sounds wrong to me, but grammatically speaking you should be using the subjunctive with _espérer que_ : _J'aurais espéré que tu m'en parles._


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## Maître Capello

No, after _espérer_, the indicative is the proper mood, e.g., see FR: espérer que + mode. Moreover, the conditional in the subordinate clause doesn't seem to be used because there is a condition but because it is a future in the past.

That being said, could you please provide the full context, Livydarling? (The appropriate translation indeed depends on what you want to say exactly.)


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## Livydarling

It was indeed the use of the subjunctive that I was confused about. The full phrase in English reads "whatever you feel, whatever you think about me, I would have hoped that you would speak to me about it". 

Any further thoughts appreciated. Thanks!


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## Maître Capello

I'm still not sure whether the hope is a real hope about the present/future or whether it is an unreal hope about the past, i.e., a regret, because "you feel" and "you think" are in the present but "I would have hoped" is in the past (conditional). Please confirm which you intend to say.


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## Livydarling

Wow French is so much more complicated than English!! I am trying to imply a real hope that whatever this person's feelings maybe, they could (and should) at any time (past/present/future),  feel able to discuss the situation with me. Does that make sense??  Help!


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## Maître Capello

In that case, I'm not sure the English is correct… Why didn't you simply say, "I *hope* that you *speak* to me"?

Anyway, in French we would say something like, _J'*espère* que tu m'en *parleras*_.


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## Assurancetourix

Yes I agree about the English - to me _I would have hoped that you would speak to me_ means _I am disappointed that you didn't speak to me_. I would say _I would hope that you would feel able to speak to me._


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## Livydarling

Actually Assurancetourix that is exactly what is meant by the English sentence. Thanks for your intervention. In which case, what would the translation be?? X

There is implied disappointment that this person didn't speak to me!


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## Assurancetourix

Right, well in that case it looks like your original suggestions were on the money, except that the first _e_ of _espéré _does not have an accent.


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## Livydarling

Thanks for all your help!


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## Maître Capello

Sorry to disagree, but you shouldn't use _espérer_ if you're not talking about a hope but about a regret or disappointment. You could however use _espérer_ if you're describing the hope (not regret) you had at that time.

_J'espérais que tu me parlerais_ → *Hope:* I was hoping you would talk to me
_J'aurais voulu que tu me parles_ → *Regret:* I would have hoped that you would talk to me / I wish you had talked to me


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## Assurancetourix

Not at all, that's how we learn. It seems an odd distinction though, in that a dashed hope is usually a matter of regret and disappointment. Would it be wrong then to follow up _j'espérais que tu me parlerais _with _mais tu l'as pas fait_? By itself, does this phrase imply that in fact the two people ended up speaking?


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## radagasty

I am still uncomfortable with the construction_ I would have hoped that_..., because it doesn't sound quite right.

Consider a parallel construction _I would have thought that_...

"I would have thought that she wouldn't be late to her own wedding."

What might the context be? She was late to her wedding, and I know that she was late. Now, I didn't think about it before, but, had I done so,* I would have thought that she wouldn't be late to her own wedding*. In this case, _would have thought _has a counterfactual or hypothetical force: I didn't in fact think it.

What of "I would have hoped that you would talk to me."?

 Is a counterfactual interpretation possible? I would say this is much less plausible. In this sentence, the hoping seems to be conditional on finding out that the thing that would hypothetically have been hoped for didn't in fact take place. It is, however, rather perverse to imagine oneself having hoped for something only upon discovering that the hope would be dashed.

To express regret, I would have used the pluperfect:
"I had hoped that you would talk to me."

"I was hoping that you would talk to me."

The imperfect is also possible, with two interpretations. It may be a simple statement about a past state of affairs. Alternatively, it may constitute a request, being a statement about a present hope couched in the past tense for the sake of politeness.


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## Maître Capello

_J'espérais que tu me parlerais_. 

That sentence is correct because it describes a hope in the past. It is not a regret. I mean, of course it could be a regret *now*, but *at that time* it wasn't; it was just a hope. Moreover, it doesn't imply anything about whether or not the two people eventually spoke.

Regarding the English, I fully agree with radagasty's analysis.


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## Assurancetourix

OK, but since the disappointment of not having your hopes fulfilled inevitably comes later than the hoping itself, this explanation of the rule means that you can perfectly well use _espérer_ to express regret in the way that Livydarling was doing.

_I would have hoped that... _is quite often used to express the fact that somebody has disappointed us, as in the original example or e.g._

I would have hoped you would have had the decency to tell me to my face instead of going behind my back

I would have hoped that you would have come to me before asking him_

It's hard to accept that such an idiomatic phrase is ungrammatical on narrow logical grounds, but I will give some thought to what radagasty has said. Off the cuff the answer could just be that there is a counterfactual, because the meaning is "if I had contemplated that situation arising, which I did not, I would have hoped...". This is not the same as contemplating that the situation would arise and the desired outcome would not materialize, which as radagasty points out would make the use of _hope_ nonsensical. This does seem to tie in with usage, in that if I started with:

_I thought you had money troubles...

_I think I would be much more likely to finish with

..._but I hoped you would come to me before going to a loan shark.

_than_

...but I would have hoped you would come to me before going to a loan shark.

_Similarly,

_I had hoped you would have the decency to tell me to my face instead of going behind my back _conveys that the person suspected that the news was coming.

One must be careful though of inventing ad hoc sentences to defend theories of usage...


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## Assurancetourix

radagasty said:


> I am still uncomfortable with the construction_ I would have hoped that_..., because it doesn't sound quite right.



OK, it sounds fine to me though, not to mention the OP.


radagasty said:


> Consider a parallel construction _I would have thought that_...



OK, _would _does not always introduce a counterfactual but let's assume that this is a parallel construction.


radagasty said:


> "I would have thought that she wouldn't be late to her own wedding."
> 
> What might the context be? She was late to her wedding, and I know that she was late. Now, I didn't think about it before, but, had I done so,* I would have thought that she wouldn't be late to her own wedding*. In this case, _would have thought _has a counterfactual or hypothetical force: I didn't in fact think it.


Fair enough (of course a bride is supposed to be a little late for her wedding, but let’s stick with the original example for clarity). The use of _would_ tells us, on the assumptions we’ve already made, that what follows is a counterfactual. However the counterfactual hypothesis, or the X in _if X, I would have Y_ is not spelt out and is left to be inferred.


radagasty said:


> What of "I would have hoped that you would talk to me."?
> 
> Is a counterfactual interpretation possible? I would say this is much less plausible. In this sentence, the hoping seems to be conditional on finding out that the thing that would hypothetically have been hoped for didn't in fact take place. It is, however, rather perverse to imagine oneself having hoped for something only upon discovering that the hope would be dashed.



Absolutely, _if I had entertained any hopes on the subject and realized that you wouldn’t talk to me, I would have hoped that you would talk to me _is perverse. However by exactly the same logic _if I had entertained any thoughts on the subject and realized that she would be late for her own wedding, I would have thought that she wouldn’t be late for her own wedding _is equally perverse, so the parallel seems to have broken down.

Surely the reason we interpret the implied _if X _of the first sentence as meaning _if I had entertained any thoughts on the subject _is precisely that the alternative interpretation makes the sentence nonsensical. Why refuse to do the same thing for the second sentence, especially if it is a “parallel case”? It seems to me that if we unpack the _if X _of both sentences we have:

_If I had entertained any thoughts about it I would have thought that she wouldn’t be late for her own wedding._

Which makes sense

And
_
If I had entertained any hopes on the subject I would have hoped that you would have talked to me._

Which also makes sense (it doesn’t involve anyone entertaining any hopes while knowing that they were certain to be dashed).

In other words the point of disagreement is where you say “the hoping seems to be conditional on finding out that the thing that would hypothetically have been hoped for didn't in fact take place”. I just can’t see any justification for this - why infer a counterfactual that makes the sentence nonsense when there is a perfectly plausible alternative that makes perfect sense of it, and when you have just applied precisely that interpretation to a parallel sentence?


radagasty said:


> To express regret, I would have used the pluperfect:
> "I had hoped that you would talk to me."
> 
> "I was hoping that you would talk to me."
> 
> The imperfect is also possible, with two interpretations. It may be a simple statement about a past state of affairs. Alternatively, it may constitute a request, being a statement about a present hope couched in the past tense for the sake of politeness.



I agree, but let’s stick with the first interpretation since that is the only one that expresses regret. Both these sentences presuppose that the speaker actually entertained such a hope. You can’t say:

_I didn’t entertain any hopes on the subject but I had hoped that you would talk to me / I was hoping that you would talk to me_.

Taking a concrete example, you can’t say:

_I had no idea you were thinking of leaving the company but I had hoped you would talk to me about it
_
In other words it has to be either:

_I had no idea you were thinking of leaving the company but I would have hoped you would have talked to me about it, _or

_I suspected that you were thinking of leaving the company but I hoped / had hoped / was hoping that you would talk to me about it
_
The first sentence easily becomes:

_I would have hoped you would have talked to me._

So it still seems to me that this is a perfectly grammatical sentence.


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