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English is strange.
In the simple past tense, we say "I solved" but to negate it, we say "I didn't solve"? Not only do you add in the negation as you might expect, but you have to add the auxiliary verb "did" because you can't negate normal verbs (unlike French where you surround it with 'ne' and then something like 'pas' or 'jamais' to signify the type of negation), which then means the original verb gets changed to match the auxiliary, so it becomes almost a different tense entirely.
But in the future tense, you can interchange "I will solve" and "I won't solve" easily enough with no confusion. Unless you start thinking about what the hell "won't" actually stands for.
At the moment I'm trying to teach myself Old English from a book, which is actually going better than I had expected, although even back then there seem to be a lot of irregularities much like the above one in Modern English. A year or two back, I posted on here about the attempt to translate Wikipedia into Old English. Back then it was all gobbledegook to me; now I can actually get the general gist of some of the articles. Maybe it'll inspire me back into learning German eventually.
In the simple past tense, we say "I solved" but to negate it, we say "I didn't solve"? Not only do you add in the negation as you might expect, but you have to add the auxiliary verb "did" because you can't negate normal verbs (unlike French where you surround it with 'ne' and then something like 'pas' or 'jamais' to signify the type of negation), which then means the original verb gets changed to match the auxiliary, so it becomes almost a different tense entirely.
But in the future tense, you can interchange "I will solve" and "I won't solve" easily enough with no confusion. Unless you start thinking about what the hell "won't" actually stands for.
At the moment I'm trying to teach myself Old English from a book, which is actually going better than I had expected, although even back then there seem to be a lot of irregularities much like the above one in Modern English. A year or two back, I posted on here about the attempt to translate Wikipedia into Old English. Back then it was all gobbledegook to me; now I can actually get the general gist of some of the articles. Maybe it'll inspire me back into learning German eventually.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 03:49 pm (UTC)It's only the contractions that bugger everything up, kids nowadays eh...
bmxbandit rob (bored and reading friends lists...)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 04:48 pm (UTC)Arabic negation of the past also puts the sentence into the present tense - and interestingly, negating the future also has that effect. Then again, Arabic is sensible enough to have negating words that are different for each tense so you can tell them apart (lam + present negates the past, lan + present subjunctive negates the future...)
I intend to learn Old English one day. It's never going to be useful, but hey, it's fun.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 10:25 pm (UTC)I'd love to learn Gaelic too eventually, though whether the Irish or Scottish variety I haven't decided.
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Date: 2007-03-04 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 10:46 pm (UTC)Do you know what nīwlicum means? Is it 'knowledge'?
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Date: 2007-03-04 10:55 pm (UTC)Sēo Ōðru Woruldgūþ wæs blōdigosta, deorwierþosta, and hīehst gūþ on nīwlicum stǣre.
I also notice that some of the modern stuff in there seems to borrow from Icelandic, and adapt it to Old English. Like the word for radio (which I can't find again) looks like an adaptation of the Icelandic word for radio: "Útvarp". Which is neat, since it is a composite of the words "út" (out) and the verp "varpa" (to throw), essentially meaning to broadcast, and these words can both be found in Old English and hence the composite is easy and looks fairly natural to me.
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Date: 2007-03-04 11:06 pm (UTC)I often wonder how modern writers of Old English decide on how to write modern words that didn't exist a thousand years ago, and I suppose that looking at the etymology of similar words in Icelandic or German and constructing them similarly is probably the most faithful way.
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Date: 2007-03-04 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 05:46 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 10:25 pm (UTC)picky
Date: 2007-03-04 07:36 pm (UTC)And you want the damned tenses to follow a decent lexical construct? OPTIMIST ALERT!
Re: picky
Date: 2007-03-04 10:20 pm (UTC)Re: picky
Date: 2007-03-04 10:38 pm (UTC)Whether these simplifications are a good thing, or even the correct ansewr, is another matter.
Re: picky
Date: 2007-03-04 10:44 pm (UTC)Re: picky
Date: 2007-03-04 10:58 pm (UTC)