05 December 2008

Great new song for subjunctive


I just got this new song, La frase tonta de la semana, by the group La 5a Estación.

The woman in the middle does pretty much all the vocals, and the guys play the guitar. The video is pretty good, though not the most interesting in the world. (She likes to change outfits a lot in her videos--LOL)

Anyway, this new song, aside from being really pretty, has a ton of subjunctive, most of it for two reasons--after cuando for something in the future, and after different phrases for something doubtful.

I've found that it's helpful for a song to keep repeating something as difficult as subjunctive for just one or two reasons, rather than jumping around all the myriad reasons to use it. Or, at least, if it does use it for more reasons, I only talk about a couple.

Incidentally, another great song for subjunctive, with a neat video to go along with it, is La travesia by Juan Luis Guerra. The song uses present perfect too, but the best part is the rapid switch between indicative --for the woman he loves-- and subjuctive --for the woman who doesn't exist-- so it's subjunctive by reason of nonexistent antecedent, right before the exact same verb that's indicative for the opposite reason. (See, I do know all the terms--I just don't speak them aloud in the classroom, haha.)

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