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Te l'avrei detto appena ci saremmo viste Topic is solved

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gmads
Mexico

Te l'avrei detto appena ci saremmo viste

Post by gmads »

The English sentence, "I would have told you as soon as we saw each other," should not be translated into Italian as, "te l'avrei detto appena ci saremmo viste" because it should use the subjunctive mood, not the indicative.

The correct translation is:

  • te l'avrei detto appena ci fossimo viste

At the following page one can review how the Italian verb "essere" is conjugated.


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User avatar
gmads
Mexico

Re: Te l'avrei detto appena ci saremmo viste

Post by gmads »

The Accademia della Crusca offers a very good explanation regarding the Italian structure condizionale/congiuntivo (conditional/subjunctive):

The following is the corresponding English translation.

"​(Non) appena" essentially has a temporal value, a value which serves to underline the close succession of two actions (that of the temporal phrase and that of the main phrase) and which can be exclusive and therefore correspond to:

subito dopo che (immediately after)
quasi nello stesso momento in cui (almost at the same time when)

but which can also be used to express an eventuality, a hypothesis with a meaning similar to:

quando (when)
tutte le volte che (every time)
se (if)

In the first case, therefore in temporal sentences that express real and not eventual actions and events, "​(non) appena" requires the verb in the indicative:

non appena arrivi, chiama (as soon as you arrive, call)
appena potrò, verrò a trovarti (as soon as I can, I will come and see you)
appena ebbi finito gli esami, andai in vacanza (as soon as I finished my exams, I went on vacation)

Another possibility for this type of sentence is the use of the past participle:

appena entrati, presero posto in prima fila (as soon as they entered, they took their place in the front row)

with ellipsis of the auxiliary verb, an ellipsis which can affect the entire verb form when the verb is either "to be" or in contexts in which the unexpressed verb can be easily reconstructed from the sense of the sentence:

appena (furono) dentro, si sentirono al sicuro (as soon as (they were) inside, they felt safe)
appena (fu/si fece) giorno, partì (as soon as (it was/came) day, they left)

In the second case, that is, when "​(non) appena (che)" introduces sentences that convey an eventuality with semantic priority with respect to the temporal indication, it will be necessary to follow the conjunction with a verb in the subjunctive, while the main (regent) phrase will have the verb in the conditional to indicate the posterior nature of its occurrence with respect to that of the temporal phrase, according to the normal construction of the hypothetical clause of the eventuality:

​(non) appena l’avesse visto, avrebbe capito (as soon as he saw it, he would have understood)

Having explained the correct usage of both cases, the answer then goes to explain that:

All the examples proposed show that the conjunction "​(non) appena", as mentioned above, establish a relationship that should indicate precedence of the temporal phrase with respect to the time of the regent. Often, however, in regular speech the two events are levelled; thus,

• instead of: ​(non) appena sarà uscito lo incontrerà ⇒ futuro anteriore → futuro semplice ()
• one can have: ​(non) appena uscirà lo incontrerà ⇒ futuro semplice → futuro semplice ()

• or: appena ebbe capito la situazione, cambiò discorso ⇒ trapassato remoto → passato remoto ()
• can become: appena capì la situazione, cambiò discorso ⇒ passato remoto → passato remoto ()

This is the situation in standard Italian, but it is true that, at less controlled levels of language, one can come across sentences such as those reported by some readers, which present, after "non appena", the past conditional instead of the past subjunctive, such as:

mi aveva detto che sarebbe venuto non appena sarebbe arrivato ()
mi aveva detto che sarebbe venuto non appena arrivasse ()

sapevo che non appena l'avrei visto avrei provato questa sensazione ()
sapevo che non appena lo vedessi avrei provato questa sensazione ()

In such cases the presence of the conditional after "non appena", which does not conform to the current standard (even if it is not without more or less recent attestations), can probably be explained as an "attraction" of the mode of the superordinate clause, where in turn the conditional has the future value of the past, depending on a main one with the verb in the past. Perhaps also the use of the same verb tense of the indicative in non-hypothetical periods —of the type seen above, "appena uscirà lo incontrerà" instead of "appena sarà uscito lo incontrerà"— may have favored the choice of the conditional tense.

In essence, it is important to distinguish between everyday common language and grammatically correct structures.

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