Verbs of Fear

On rare occasions a textbook can hit, probably unconsciously, an unexpectedly fine stylistic and philosophical note. This week as we survey the main uses of the Polish conditional—a tongue-twisting mood of consistent impossibility, for example, przemilczelibyśmy, “we (masculine or mixed gender groups) would/might be silent”—main use letter e. reads as follows:

Following verbs of wanting, doubting, fearing:

Since the whole of life demonstrably (viz. Gautama Buddha) consists of wanting, doubting, and fearing, what need then, really, of the indicative or the imperative mood? (A good question for all languages; though, I suppose that the interrogative could survive as a sort of yang to the conditional yin.) Thankfully, or not, the Buddha wasn’t Polish, and so the wheel of suffering/learning rolls on. Quiz tomorrow.

Use e. works like this: whenever you use a verb like chcieć (“to want”) or wątpić (“to doubt”) or bać się (“to be afraid”) to introduce a verb phrase or a subordinate clause, you would incline to using the conditional verb form in what follows, for example:

Boję się, żebym nigdy nie zrozumiał jędzyka polskiego. (“I fear that I might never understand the Polish language”). Strangely, ironically, beautifully, Professor Swan adds,

Verbs of fearing and doubting may also be followed by the indicative, in case there is greater certainty regarding the “feared” or “doubted” event.

In which case, the indicative: Boję się, że nigdy nie zrozumiem jędzyka polskiego. (“I fear that I will never understand the Polish language”). Hopefully, the Buddha proves correct, and that this latter seeming certainty will evanesce for what it is, an illusion, and I will understand Polish, not perfectly perhaps, ever, but sufficiently, significantly enough.