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matteo tironi.
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Welcome guys to the third part of our journey in the mysterious world of Italian traps.... I meant, modal verbs 
as we have covered the mighty potere and the I-know-all sapere, today we will move on to the willful volere
In order to tackle it properly, let's go back to its root and let's see why it means what it means.
Volere, like pretty much any word in Italian, comes from the Latin volo, which in turn comes from the super-turbo-old PIE (proto indoeuropean) wehl-wel, which according to Wiktionary stood for to strive after/to pursue.
Well, back then, people was really simpleminded, and all they could seemingly think about was hunting, that's all they w...oops, let's not spoil it so quickly.
So, in time, the verb has changed meaning and got wider, including every kind of thing you could possibly seek, and as if you seek for something, you definitely want it, it started meaning that in Latin, and it kept that meaning onward.
Most of the European verbs for to want actually come from that super-old wel root, but oddly not English, because to want comes from a Germanic word that stood for to lack.
Do ask me why such a meaningless change got on... I mean, if you don't have something you may want it but.... well, let's leave speculations out.
Anyway, note that traces of will (the descendant of the Old Engish for to want, willan), still retains its meaning of “to want” in certain contexts, such as the words willingly (in Italian, volontariamente) and the will (Italian: la volontà).
Moreover, many English words that resemble volere are of course related to it (voluntary,volunteer, etc.), as they all express something related to someone's will (volontà)
So, volere means to want. Fair and square:
voglio una mela
I want an apple
voglio fare il bagno
I want to have a bath/to bathe into the sea
if you want to higher the degree of politeness of the sentence, you have to use the conditional tense in place of the indicative, making the meaning roughly “would like.”
voglio una mela=vorrei una mela
just like
I want an apple= I'd like an apple.
The meaning stays the same, but the politeness varies.
So, volere works like this with both nouns and verbs.... well, not really.
It works with verbs ONLY if the to want's subject is the same as the other verb's one.
In the previous example, I wanted and I bathe. Same subject.
So something like:
I want you to go there.
can't be
io voglio tu vai lì.
This sounds like two separate clauses to me: I want something unspecified and you go there, simply.
In order to make this sentence work, you need to use him, the one that everybody's afraid of.... the subjunctive
io voglio che tu vada lì.
Now it works. So remember, if you want to change subject, you need to use che+subjunctive.
However, there is an exception to this subjunctive rule: the verb to be. When I want someone to be a preposition (like in English) or an adjective (unlike English, as far as I know), the verb is omitted AT ALL.
e.g.
Ti voglio pronto per le 10.
Or also (maybe in a book or a formal context)
Voglio che tu sia pronto per le 10.
I want you to be ready by 10 o'clock. (Unlike English)
Voglio comprare un cavallo. Lo voglio forte e sano.
Or also (maybe in a book or a formal context)
Vorrei (conditional enhances the speech's politeness) un cavallo. Voglio che sia forte e sano.
I wanna buy a horse. I want it to be strong and healthy.
Ti voglio fuori da casa mia!
I want you out of my house!(like English)
This phrasing sounds very bossy and demanding when used in requests though, therefore it is used in direct orders whereas the subjunctive way is much better in formal contexts.
Furthermore, note that the subject is always the one that wants, so the direct object pronoun HAS to be in the front part of the sentence. (as if it were a literal translation of the English I want you....)
Of course, the subjunctive version always work, although it would feel “cold” in an everyday discussion.
Ok, so now we know how to make “chained” sentences using volere,but there is a major exception to this rule being voler dire.
If I say something like:
Voglio dire che non verrò
I want to say that I won't come.
It doesn't differ that much from the previous examples.
But what about this one?
Cosa vuole dire questa parola?
What does this word want to say? (lit.)
hm, here you need some brain gymnastic. So, of course a word cannot “want” something, but as we remember that the volere verb comes from a very very old PIE verb that means to strive after/pursue, we can somewhat guess that a better version of this sentence could be:
what is this word striving (i.e. Trying) to say?
So, the word is there, we don't understand it, no matter how we look at it. We just can't get what it means....... did you get what voler dire means? Yep, to mean
what does this word mean?
However, voler dire does not include the “intention” part of the verb to mean.
I was meant to go there.
Io sono voluto dire andare lì (sort of lit. to Italian) WRONG.
You can't use it like that....... however we do have a “proper” version of to mean, that also covers the intention part, intendere (the intention part actually is avere intenzione), but it is not used that much, and its grammar is far harder and less straightforward than voler dire's one. For instance, the previous sentence using intendere would be:
cosa si intende per questa parola?
And it would sound very stilted and weird. As if you had just popped out of Middle ages.
However, note that voler dire retains its meaing as “to want to say”, so a sentence like:
“cosa volevi dire?” could either be:
Was did you mean? or
Was did you want to say?
Now, there is another main other weird meaning of volere left to cover, and that's voler bene(a sb).
Bene, grammar-wise, is a noun, but it is not preceded by any determiner (in Italian, every noun has to be preceded by a determiner with volere), so it has a different meaning from the standard one, although not so far from the original one.
Voler bene significa to love, but it has two main differences in comparison to it:
1)it can be referred to people, and animals to a certain extent, only. You can't volere bene a verb or an object (well, in very abstract situations it may work with objects, even though it would sound extremely odd).
2)it does not refer to lover's love only, rather to a more generic affection. I can volere bene to my friends, to my parents, to my pets, and of course to my partner, but I can't use amare (the proper translation of to love) them, besides my partner.
So:
voglio bene ai miei genitori= I love my parents (I “feel affection” toward them)
amo i miei genitori= I am incestuous.
Really, I you said something like that it would sound AWFUL.
One last thing before calling it a day: what does volere mean when it occurs with the si impersonal particle? I mean, an impersonal entity can't want something, right?
i.e. Something like
one wants to find a solution.
Wouldn't make sense at all in English (at least to me). Who's one????
well, in Italian a sentence like
si vuole trovare una soluzione.
Does make sense. It is a very gentle and subtle way to give instructions used in books and similars.
So the previous sentence would be best translated in English as:
you/we are to find a solution.
It is very subtle, and it is not used in spoken Italian, at least not this way.
It can have another meaning, in representing the purpose (to be meant) of something:
In questo libro si vuole semplicemente discutere delle cause del problema, non delle sue soluzioni.
This book is simply meant to deal with the problem's causes, not its solutions.
Ah, this purpose-related meaning of volere can occur even when the subject is not si, but an object, albeit this phrasing sounds a bit formal and stiff)
e.g.
Questo libro vuole essere una denuncia contro ogni forma di abuso.
This book is meant to denounce to any kind of abuse.
At any rate, it is a very very rare form you are not likely to run into any day soon. Of all the uses of volere I listed here, this is the least common and the one you can simply forget and not bother learning, still I wanted to list it for completeness.
Ehm, did I tell you we were done? Actually there is one last use of volere I'd like to talk about:
in the volerci pronominal form, it is used to express that something is necessary in order to accomplish something else, that would be to take in English.
Ci vogliono due ore per arrivare là.
It takes two hours to get there.
Ci vorrà più tempo del previsto.
It will take more time than expected.
As you can see, while English has only one form (it takes....), Italian has two: 3rd singular person for singular nouns and 3rd plural for plural nouns.(a bit as if it were: they take two hours...)
Soooooo, it's about time we wrapped this up with the usual recap:
1)volere is the Italian verb for to want, although is has a different etymology, and it can be used with both nouns and verbs, even though verbs require a special che+subjunctive construction in case volere's subject differs from the other verb's one.
2)volere can be used in the conditional form to higher politeness, and it can be skipped altogether in informal contexts when the following verb is essere (with both prepositions (like English) and adjectives (unlike English)
3)voler dire is a compound verb and it stands for to mean, but only when referred to the meaning of actions or what one was meant to say, not to intentions related to other verbs.
4)voler bene stands for to love, but it is more general (not the way of love you feel for your girl/boyfriend) and it can't refer to objects and verbs, just to people and animals at best.
5) when volere's subject is the impersonal particle si, it can stand for either an instruction written in handbooks or to express something's purpose, the purpose related meaning can occur even in reference to objects, and is best translated as (to be meant to).
6)the pronominal verb volerci is used to express the amount of time/efforts/money/so forth that are necessary in order to do something. (like it takes..... in English)
Pheeeeeeeeew, it's oveeeeeer. So ok, now I can finally go for a pizza
in case you have doubts/questions/whatever, feel free to pm me
.
the modals3: volere level3the whimmy volere is in now, and will make you tremble :) |
