Modal Verbs (84)
Published by Dave January 27th, 2007 in podcast, howard s., daveHoward Shepherd and Dave Shepherd should, can, and must discuss modal verbs.
Howard gives a shoutout to Henrik Hansen and to the Danish language-related podcast Sproghjørnet. (2:17)
Howard and Dave give an overview of auxiliary verbs, of which modal verbs are a subset. (3:17)
Music bumper from “Just Looking,” by The Jerrys (9:32)
Modal verbs and grammatical mood (10:11)
Song: “You Can Never Hold Back Spring,” by Tom Waits (15:49)
Rude word of the week: “wannabe” (18:14)
Music bumper from “Melancolica” by Mauricio Cuburu (22:08)
Modal verbs in languages other than English (22:49)
Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network
Theme music by Kick the Cat
time: 30:31
size: 28 Mb
rating: G (We managed to talk about this without being rude.)
Thanks once again for a most enjoyable and informative podcast. All your hard work is appreciated.
I noticed when you were speaking about the “will” root that you implied that it came from Latin. Actually, the undocumented Germanic root was a cousin to Latin. All, if historical linguists are correct, are from Indo-European *wel (http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE564.html).
I loved it that you brought up some Russian this episode … speaking of modal verbs, the Russian verb ???? (1 sg. mogu) is their relation to German mögen and English may.
Cheers,
Renny
Just to alert you: I am not successful at downloading this episode with iTunes. Error: please check that the url is correct … (It surely should be, this subscription worked for the previous issues)
A
From approximately 21:00 Washington time on Monday (i.e., 9:00 PM, for you Americans) until 6:00 AM on Tuesday, the site was essentially down.
In anticipation of a move of the site to a new server (for which a hosting company has been found!), I changed some settings in the blog that caused parts of it to be invisible to the web (and to iTunes).
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My German teacher in high school always said that the difference between Can and May, is that Can refers to the Physical and Mental Ability to do something, and May gives someone permission.
Great show!
Hi guys,
I really enjoy all (OK, most) of your podcasts, but this one was great. I have a thing for foreign languages and started listening to you, because Annik Rubens from Schlaflos in Muenchen referred to you way back. Anyway, I was frustrated as a student in my required English classes whenever the teacher talked about grammar. Later I started learning German, which makes American grammar look like amateur hour. One can learn much about his own language by studying another. Viel Dank fuer Eure Arbeit - ich freue mich auf das naechste Podcast. Schoene Gruesse aus der Obere Halbinsel von Michigan.
If only you could have played William Shatner’s “Has Been” after finishing up the Rude Word of the Week segment… it’s brilliant.