Talk:Modal verb

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The redirection of "Modal Verb" to the Grammatical Mood page is erroneous. It was correct prior to this edit when it was being redirected to the Modal Auxiliary Verb page.

The Modal Auxiliary Verb page needs to be greatly expanded. The comment on this erroneous edit is "to eliminate a double redirection". The Modal Auxiliary Verb page is so small that it was thought to be nothing more than a redirection to the Grammatical Mood page.

Modal verb should not redirect to English modal auxiliary verb because other languages have modal verbs. peace – ishwar  (speak) 08:25, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The page is now about Germanic modal verbs in general, with an emphasis on syntax. I find conflicting information about whether the terminology 'modal verb' is applicable to non-Germanic languages. That question should be settled by someone who can read grammar books in those languages, rather than English text about them. --Syboor 17:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] this page is very wrong

i'm going to delete the examples the translations and stuff. or put a factual accuracy thing on —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.80.32.12 (talk) 21:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't understand your point. What was wrong about the list? Did you read all the stuff about the list not providing translations? Or the section "Please, check this" on this discussion page?

I have reinstated the word list. IMHO, without it, the entire section on Properties of Modal Verbs is pretty unintelligible. I also added the singular forms of German and Dutch verbs to the list. This is because the vowel alternation between singular and plural in these languages is a distinct feature of modal verb (which is stated in the "Properties"-section, put pretty hard to understand without examples). And because often the English form is more related to the German/Dutch singular form than to the plural form. Syboor 15:02, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please, check this.

In the German page, it states "Das Deutsche kennt sechs Modalverben: wollen, müssen, können, mögen, sollen und dürfen." So, why are here listed others, like brauchen or wagen?

The German page is right and this page is wrong. It used to be right. It seems that somebody decided to turn the German list into a translation of the English list, rather than a list of German words with the same etymological roots. 'werden', 'brauchen' and 'wagen' are not modal verbs, so don't belong here. I'll change it back and see if I can clarify things (even) better, but I think the person who made this change was clearly in error (because the article already stated that the list does not provide translations). Syboor 23:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Not only are those not modal verbs but the English translations of many of the correct modal verbs are horribly wrong. Sollen is more correctly translated as should, wollen is to want (werden is will), mögen is to like and dürfen is may or to be allowed to. Need is most definitely not a modal verb in German and I don't believe is considered a modal in English by many people any more.

Yes, translations are tricky. Is there some page about it that we could link to? I'm not sure from your comment whether you agree with the current list on this page. BTW, the page English modal auxiliary verb has a longer discussion about whether or not 'need' is modal; you're right that it never is in German. Syboor 09:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the "translations" are not wrong, because they are not translations :P . Etymologically, words in the same row share common roots. So, because of that is that we have things like sollen=shall. --Pfc432 11:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the "will" in English is not the "wollen" in German, for example.

"Ich will etwas tun" - I want to do something (or "I intend on doing something")(as compared to "Ich moechte etwas tun" - "I would like to do something")

"Ich werde etwas tun" - I will do something (or "I am going to do something").

The German newspapers often use "wollen" to mean intention - somebody intends to do something,etc.

This really should be changed.Flivelwitz 22:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)