Tenses for waive15

[studiot]

Quote

Waive15

Subject + Predicate, I suppose is a mathematical definition for Simple Sentence. But I want to hear clear definition for Grammatical case(only for English, German and Russia - languages which are important to me) and Tense. That is why I am here. I will be glad if you can provide me with some.

There are some who consider language a scientific subject.
Certainly it can be very technical.

You might enjoy "The Cambridge Encylopedia of Language."
I believe you can get a pdf download for your E reader.

Tenses:

Some languages (Latin, German, ...) use changes to the endings of nouns to indicate different purposes.
English does not do this very much.

Most languages (German, French, Latin, Russian .. ) offer a much smaller set of changes to verbs than does English.
Although there are only three basic tenses, Past Present and Future, English has many variations on each.
These variations often confuse those learning English as a foreign language because the ideas behind them are not well explained.

(I learned a bit of Russian at school in 1960 ans was suprised that you do not have a present tense like our verb "to be")

Now this must be difficult because English uses a second auxiliary word to modify the meanings of both nouns and verbs.

For now I will give one example reason of why English has so many tenses for verbs.
Verbs are 'action' words.
Actions can be momentary (finished as soon as they happen or are started)

for example: John kicks the ball

Or they can be continuous or ongoing

for example: John is digging the garden.

With three tenses there are several possibilities.

John was digging the garden (past) but has now finished (present)

John was digging the garden (past) and is still digging the garden (present)

John is digging the garden (present) and will still be digging the garden at half past two. (future)

etc

There is more if this is helpful.

 

 

[Strange]

Quote

Subject + Predicate, I suppose is a mathematical definition for Simple Sentence.

I would not say that this is a mathematical definition; it happens to use the + sign. 

The study of language (linguistics) is, or certainly should be, scientific. But that does mean that language is either mathematical or logical. It is not. The use and development of language is full of completely illogical, and even paradoxical, things. For example, Sturtevant's paradox: “Sound change is regular and causes irregularity; analogy is irregular and causes regularity.”

There are probably no universal rules that can be applied to any language; for every nearly-universal rule you will probably find exceptions in actual usage.

 

[waive15]

Thank you, studiot, and thank you, Strange, for you replies .

I will tell you why I feel a little embarrassed:

- my spelling when I write to you comes mainly as a feature of Ubuntu, it is not my accomplishment;

- as I talk to you I almost go literally - I go word for word(my language word- english word)  I speak/use my language as a normal man(I don't thing at all, use it as a HABIT), but when I start to look closely at what I say, I see that I don't understand "my first foreign language" more than i understand English;

-  I first understood Recently the logic of Conditionals in English(there was an excellent web page. Until then i had read many pages on the theme) and THEN i understood Conditionals in "my language" and now i use "english logic" to speak Conditionally in "my language" but if I can i  avoid conditionals.

As a sign of gratitude I will mention

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

If you haven't seen it already, you probably shall. Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Shakespeare and something two-sided. I always keep this movie on my computer.

 

Thanks again and have a nice day.

[studiot]

34 minutes ago, waive15 said:

-  I first understood Recently the logic of Conditionals in English(there was an excellent web page. Until then i had read many pages on the theme) and THEN i understood Conditionals in "my language" and now i use "english logic" to speak Conditionally in "my language" but if I can i  avoid conditionals.

Conditionals are difficult.

Do the easy stuff first.

On 12/3/2019 at 10:18 AM, studiot said:

There is more if this is helpful.

Conditionals are part of the 'more'.

Was the easy stuff helpful?

[waive15]

Yes, sudiot,

It is so kind of you.

 

/Although I claim that I understood them, that is more like in general that  I understood them BUT in practice  they are still difficult for me to implement/

 

Thanks for reply, have a nice time.

 

[Strange]

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Conditionals are difficult.

You should try Japanese conditionals!

[waive15]

Hi Strange,

I finally broke through russian conditionals with a great help of a russian grammar from  year188?. I am so happy.

Also there it is clearly stated that in to-day Russian there is not existing PAST FORM OF THE VERB. And this is in connection why Conditionals in russian look illogical.

I have russian friends and even russians don't get it(although they speak flawless Russian).

 

I've seen Shogun several times. Lessons in Japanese in that film were very interesting for me. For me it sounds hard and i like hard sounding languages.

I like English because it is very simple(simplified), almost artificial. Even insults(foul language, even downloaded a dictionary) in English don't offend me.

If i ever approach Japanese it will be through English.

Thanks for reply

[Strange]

1 hour ago, waive15 said:

If i ever approach Japanese it will be through English.

Not sure if that is the best approach. For pronunciation, it is very similar to Italian. But the grammar is completely unlike any European language. Verbs only have a present and past tense, but are conjugated in multiple other ways to indicate desire, probability, respect, voice, etc. But not for number or person. Adjectives conjugate like verbs. Apart from the ones that behave like nouns. And the word order is completely different: object-subject-verb.

1 hour ago, waive15 said:

I've seen Shogun several times. Lessons in Japanese in that film were very interesting for me. For me it sounds hard and i like hard sounding languages.

It depends. The language used by samurai and gangsters is tends to use short words, with simple conjugations and so can sound quite staccato. But the langue used in polite conversation uses more polysyllabic words with complex conjugations and sounds softer and more "lilting".

[waive15]

Hi Strange,

Thanks for the interest. I have very limited abilities  - even Conditionals in "my language" are difficult for me. I dare not study Japanese.

I will tell you a story.

Some years ago I was desperate about that I cannot understand english logic in english phonetics and writing. And deserted english and went into turkish(grammars were in english and russian). Turkish is close/dear to me in different reasons. I heard that somehow very distantly it have something common with Japanese. I don't know if this is true but that was one of the reasons too. Turkish has excellent alphabet. That made it easy for me. So instead of learning Japanese which is not a spoon for my mouth i went to turkish. Turkish phonetics helped me to understand english, french and german phonetics and then after i found out ETYMONLINE (dot) com i started to understand and english writing.

I found out an excellent turkish grammar written by a famous British/Scottish grammarian written in 1950-ies when Turkey entered NATO.  Not  too deep - just essentials + some exercises + some military terms. And what made me happy was conjugation of the adjectives!!! You see in russian in present tense they omit verb BE. So do turks, but verbal ending of BE goes to the end of the adjective  - very nice and simple idea + turks use the same verbal endings for all verbs in all tenses(with a very, very few exceptions). For an exercise I took verbal endings of russian BE and put them at the end of their adjectives in Nominative case. It was nice. I downloaded Pimsleur's audio lessons and I listen to them in my car, also catch turkish radio and listen to it especially love commercials.

Japanese is a long, long shot for me as distance and intellectual capabilities.

 

I am really afraid that i am boring. If this is the case - just say - there will not be any hard feelings.

Have a nice day.

[Strange]

I learned a lot of what I know about English grammar from studying other languages.We didn't learn much grammar at school.

[waive15]

Instrumental case is live and kicking in English.

Why german/english nouns have no gender(of course German "has")?!  Because they lost their noun/adjective endings in Nominative case.(don't be  nitpicking) (and the same is in the other cases - accusative, dative, instrumental)

Past participles(active and passive) in English and German have different meaning BUT they look the same.

Look at werden in German.

 

 

[studiot]

1 hour ago, waive15 said:

Instrumental case is live and kicking in English.

Why german/english nouns have no gender(of course German "has")?!  Because they lost their noun/adjective endings in Nominative case.(don't be  nitpicking) (and the same is in the other cases - accusative, dative, instrumental)

Past participles(active and passive) in English and German have different meaning BUT they look the same.

Look at werden in German.

 

 

 

Most English speakers find learning all the Der Die Das in German or le la les in French to be a pain. I know I did.

 

This article, along with many showing different opinions on the web, shows how far ahead common usage is of academic classification.

https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/Cases/English-Case

Until today I had never heard of an instrumental case.

But I was taught the ablative in school.

[waive15]

33 minutes ago, studiot said:

 

Most English speakers find learning all the Der Die Das in German or le la les in French to be a pain. I know I did.

 

This article, along with many showing different opinions on the web, shows how far ahead common usage is of academic classification.

https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/Cases/English-Case

Until today I had never heard of an instrumental case.

But I was taught the ablative in school.

Hi sudiot,

Thank you for  your interest about the theme.

It is SIMPLE!

English, German, Latin, Russian, "my language" ....("even" French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, ...) ARE the SAME.

that = the = das = тот = la , le , les. ...   (are Demonstrative pronouns for the far)

/English - German - Russian(slavic) - ... /

Russians and German(Enlish, Dutch, ...) are Cousins.

On the West people Naturally don't understand Latin, Greek, German, English, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish and then Turkish and Semitic languages.

Genitive case is EMBEDDING(genitive case is understood by  everyone), BUT Instrumental case IS NOT AT ALL UNDERSTOOD!(because it is THE OBVIOUS!)

All my posts are about the LANGUAGE. From the 1st. You don't have MATHEMATICS without the LANGUAGE.

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

 

Most English speakers find learning all the Der Die Das in German or le la les in French to be a pain. I know I did.

 

This article, along with many showing different opinions on the web, shows how far ahead common usage is of academic classification.

https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/Cases/English-Case

Until today I had never heard of an instrumental case.

But I was taught the ablative in school.

/just for the attention/

[Strange]

3 hours ago, waive15 said:

Instrumental case is live and kicking in English.

Not really. English uses prepositions to indicate this, rather than case marking. (I suppose one could consider prepositions as case marking that is detached from the noun, but that is a bit of a stretch.)

1 hour ago, waive15 said:

English, German, Latin, Russian, "my language" ....("even" French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, ...) ARE the SAME.

Well, similar. They are all Indo-European languages, so have some things in common.

But they are not the same in the way that Bahasa-Malayu and Bahasu-Indonesia are (or US and British English).

[waive15]

I am an italinan! I am the same as everybody else .

[Strange]

8 minutes ago, waive15 said:

I am an italinan! I am the same as everybody else .

Maybe, but the language isn't!

[dimreepr]

language Timothy

[waive15]

I am an Italiano vero. Let's give ourselves a time.

 

 

[studiot]

7 hours ago, waive15 said:

that = the = das = тот = la , le , les. ...   (are Demonstrative pronouns for the far)

I don't think so,

'The' is called the definite article

as opposed to

'a' which is the indefinite article

 

Most languagues do not make this distinction, or if they did it has fallen out of use

 

But it is a useful distinction to make.

 

Furthermore there is 'the and 'a' are the same for all genders.

[Strange]

10 minutes ago, studiot said:

Most languagues do not make this distinction, or if they did it has fallen out of use

Good summary of which languages do and do not have articles of various types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)#Variation_among_languages

 

[waive15]

I learnt it by heart years ago.

 

 

Language is a deadly serious business.

that = the = das = тот  is one and the same word.

In "My name is Earl" the father of Jeff Brides stars. If you go to S03E17 14:20 ...

Edited December 13, 2019 by waive15

[Strange]

4 hours ago, waive15 said:

that = the = das = тот  is one and the same word

You have a very odd definition of “same word”. “That” and “the” are spelt differently, have different meanings and are different grammatically. So obviously not the same word. 

4 hours ago, waive15 said:

In "My name is Earl" the father of Jeff Brides stars. If you go to S03E17 14:20 ...

If you have something to say then say it - don’t post cryptic references that mean nothing to anyone else. 

(And please stop filling the thread with irrelevant videos)

[waive15]

I apologize.

[waive15]

Hi again.

About links you sent me - Thank you.

Link sent me by studiot: I was there a time ago. I preferred to study   English as a language with grammatical cases because it simplifies things. Russian/German grammatical cases (their definitions) work in English. Case endings which are missing are not a big problem.

the more the merrier  - "Here, what appears to be the definite article "the" is actually a demonstrative pronoun in the instrumental case" /I copied and pasted from the site you gave me./

It is easy to translate that phrase  in Russian with  demonstrative pronoun in Instrumental  case word for word.

 

The link which you gave me, Strange: I was there exactly in spring last year. If we go down in that page under Evolution/ Definite articles  -  "Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that." /I copied and pasted from the page/ I had to know what the definite article was, because then I studied German - grammatical cases were easy But I didn't know how to handle the definite article. I asked around in the internet and I was told. Then in the summer I met some people from Sweden and because of the map on the site I asked them if it was true.  Yes, they put the definite article after the word as suffix.

das -->d/as = d- + -as; d- + -er(nominative case masculine ending) = der; d- + -ie( nominative case feminine/plural  ending) and so on. After Russian, grammatical cases in German are a joke.

Even simpler are grammatical cases in Turkish. They don't have definite article, for "indefinite article" they use bir(one), just like russians and it is not exactly an indefinite article.

Demonstrative pronouns give(are used for) not only the definite article but sometimes Personal pronouns - the 3rd Person .

Last year I was happy( I still am) because of the simplicity of the idea behind definite article(very, very Practical idea).

English is a language nicely simplified. There are things which are messed up or missing in that language.

 

Thank you, dimreepr, for the link. I am watching it now. This is the main reason that I am in English - to watch comedies(+/- sarcasm).

 

Have a nice day

[waive15]

Hi,

At one go I cannot say all.

the more the merrier - "by the amount more, by that amount merrier"./copy-paste from the page/

When I see that phrase I don't go to Instrumental nor to Russian - I am not that smart.

Nor I go "by the amount more, by that amount merrier" - not that smart either.

I do this:

1. all 4 words are known to me - Okay

2. don't pay attention to every each word - I take the phrase as a whole

3. to that phrase I assign meaning(just visualize the situation simplified + how I feel)

Of course I don't trust myself and question my conclusions if possible.

 

I gave up German because it is more "HEAVY" than English("light"). Be + past participle(for a few verbs), have + past participle with the same meaning which leads to using of Werden in passive voice(I find it not pleasant at all). Also grammatical cases are annoying. German is between Russian and English(both ends of a transition) - English complete transition - Russian - no transition.(losing all endings - of the verbs, of the nouns; phrasal verbs, ...   -  not losing nothing, not touching the prefixes of the verb,...) but some things are the same in both languages and so on.

German was helpful in 2 aspects though:

1. with german logic in English

2. with phrasal verbs

 

Thanks