English is a strange language... - ComputerCraft Forums (archive)

H4X0RZ #1

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1583 posts

Location Germany

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:19 PM

Yea, this isn't CC related…

Question:
Where is the "Future past continuum" for example "I will been shot" useful?

theoriginalbit #2

7508 posts

Location Australia

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:35 PM

My first, and pretty much only, language is English, and I have never heard of a "Future past continuum".

Also your example, "I will been shot", would never be useful, as it is incorrect English, you're mixing up your tense, "been" is past tense, "be" is current and future tense, so what that sentence should say is "I will be shot", not "I will been shot". If you were to use "been", then it should read "I have been shot", again, this is because "will" is future tense, and "have" is past tense.

billysback #3

536 posts

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:38 PM

English is meant to have a ridiculous number of tenses, but the only ones I'm consciously aware of using are past, present, future and I guess conditional, though no doubt I use a load of other tenses,

I have been shot, I will be shot, I am being shot, I may be shot … There's probably more

theoriginalbit #4

7508 posts

Location Australia

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:43 PM

billysback, on 26 June 2013 - 04:38 PM said:
English is meant to have a ridiculous number of tenses, but the only ones I'm consciously aware of using are past, present, future and I guess conditional, though no doubt I use a load of other tenses,
I have been shot, I will be shot, I am being shot, I may be shot … There's probably more

Yeah they're the main ones I know of too… completely forgot about conditional tense (which technically isn't a real thing, its just a nice descriptor for it) until you posted it, its something I don't use very often.

Engineer #5

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1522 posts

Location The Netherlands

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:46 PM

I think he is referring to future past continuous. But Im not quite sure if that even exists in English, however past continuous and future seperately do exist

theoriginalbit #6

7508 posts

Location Australia

Posted 26 June 2013 - 04:49 PM

In that case, there is past/present/future continuous tense, but there is not a combination of any of those that I know, and/or have been taught in all my years of education.

H4X0RZ #7

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1583 posts

Location Germany

Posted 26 June 2013 - 05:23 PM

Sorry for my mistake, I've jumbled something in my mind :s
I mean " Future perfect continuous" like in " I will have been shooting"

ElvishJerricco #8

808 posts

Posted 26 June 2013 - 05:26 PM

Freack100, on 26 June 2013 - 05:23 PM said:
Sorry for my mistake, I've jumbled something in my mind :s
I mean " Future perfect continuous" like in " I will have been shooting"

Saying "I will have been shooting" is like saying "In the future, I will be able to truthfully say 'I have been shooting.'" Although I'm still not sure that example is entirely correct. I know stuff like "I will have been shot" is correct though.

billysback #9

536 posts

Posted 26 June 2013 - 05:34 PM

In that example you could just write "I will go shooting" or "I will have gone shooting"? I dunno, I will have been shooting sounds a bit strange but it's probably fine…

Cranium #10

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3790 posts

Location Lincoln, Nebraska

Posted 26 June 2013 - 06:06 PM

Or, I will be shot.

nitrogenfingers #11

513 posts

Location Australia

Posted 26 June 2013 - 08:49 PM

Most of the above examples are not the future past continuous but the future perfect- that is applying will to place it in the future tense and have to put it in the passive voice and make it perfect.

The project will have finished compiling before we have to go home- future perfect.

The past continuous makes use of was and the present continuous tense of the verb to indicate an action that was occurring but isn't anymore.

I was in the middle of debugging a program - past continuous

I've never heard of the future past continuous and I don't think that it constitutes proper English, because we never apply both was and will to the same verb in the same tense and sentence. I think the closest you can get is the future perfect continuous, which is a very specialist tense and rarely used:

I will have been waiting for my program to finish for over an hour if things keep moving this slowly.

Grammatically correct but doesn't actually make much sense. It's pretty rare to want to use this tense.

On an aside, English is a highly irregular language but things like different tenses and verb conjugations exist in most languages. Foreign speakers may find the strange rules about verb conjugation quite strange, but likewise English speakers find the application of gender to object articles in romantic languages like French equally confusing. English has only 3 or 4 tenses (usually), so it's not too bad compared to languages like Latin which have I think 14 for both nouns and verbs.

Symmetryc #12

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500 posts

Posted 26 June 2013 - 09:11 PM

I think there is also a present subjunctive tense as a 5th type of tense, but I don't remember very good :P/>.

JustPingo #13

116 posts

Location France

Posted 27 June 2013 - 10:10 AM

You can't say that english is a strange language if you have seen the French.

We haven't something like gerund (I'm eating) : we have to say something very long (Je suis en train de manger).
Do and make are the same verb (faire), very not practical.
We have A LOT of endings for the verbs, you say I eat, you eat, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat, it's simple and enough. Us, we say je mange, tu manges, il mange, nous mangeons, vous mangez, ils mangent, and it's only the simple present. The "passé simple", something very similar to the preterit, is very very strange(I killed (super example xD), you killed, he killed, we killed, you killed, they killed, no problems, super simple, but in french, WTF : je tuai, tu tuas, il tua, nous tuâmes (WTF is this ending ?), vous tuâtes, ils tuèrent).
"Où" is the ONLY word that use the ù (and it have a dedicated button on our keyboard oO).
We have to say a disk which play a music (but a lot of people say "play a disk of music").

Thanks you l'Académie Française !

H4X0RZ #14

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1583 posts

Location Germany

Posted 27 June 2013 - 10:30 AM

Wtf!? French is stranger than English, but latin is the strangest :D/>
For example the verb to be:
Englisch: am, are, is, are, are, are
Latin: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt (Wtf!?)

Yea, latin has that much grammar. For example the ACI (Accusativum cum Infinitivo). It's used in indirect speech…

And at the end, a latin sentence (really hard):
Multi Troiani necati erant, multa aedificia iam deleta erant, ubique flammae ruinaeque videbantur.

A snippet of "Escape of the burning Troja" Actio 1 Lection 17 O_o

JustPingo #15

116 posts

Location France

Posted 27 June 2013 - 11:03 AM

No, Latin is not the strangest : the passive voice is the simplest EVER.
And you haven't to think about order of proposals, you can put the object before the subject.

And about latin's endings, it's similar to the French (the French is a latin language).

Zudo #16

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1114 posts

Location UK

Posted 27 June 2013 - 01:18 PM

Very weird topic :)/>

M4sh3dP0t4t03 #17

570 posts

Location Germany

Posted 27 June 2013 - 02:09 PM

German is much weirder than latin(except if it's your first language like for me). But the winner in weirdness is Brainfuck.

Engineer #18

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1522 posts

Location The Netherlands

Posted 27 June 2013 - 02:35 PM

KingOfNoobs, on 27 June 2013 - 02:09 PM said:
But the winner in weirdness is Brainfuck.

Interesting how you talk Brainfuck to other people.. Cmon…

Und ich kann auch ein bisschen Deutsch, mit die Namen und die persönliche präpasationen und weiter und weiter.

I know I messed up bad that sentence, Im glad Im dropping German next year

H4X0RZ #19

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1583 posts

Location Germany

Posted 27 June 2013 - 04:42 PM

Yea, german is hard. :)/>
One of the hardest things is the nomilalisation (In my opinion).
It means that you use a verb as subject in a sentence.
German example:Das Laufen ist schwer.

And we write all nouns capitalized.
And we have three words for "the", for each gender one.
German:der Apfel, die Schule, das Auto
English:the apple, the school, the car

Lyqyd #20

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8543 posts

Posted 27 June 2013 - 06:53 PM

Future perfect continuous tense can make sense when there is a known contextual time that we're referencing, perhaps preceded by the other party stating something in future perfect tense.

nitrogenfingers #21

513 posts

Location Australia

Posted 27 June 2013 - 11:30 PM

Lyqyd, on 27 June 2013 - 06:53 PM said:
Future perfect continuous tense can make sense when there is a known contextual time that we're referencing, perhaps preceded by the other party stating something in future perfect tense.

Lyqyd is correct. I think the best example I have seen is:

How long will you have been studying when you graduate?

Which is logical. Puts me in mind of the sort of question you'd ask someone you don't know very well

pingoleon60, on 27 June 2013 - 11:03 AM said:
No, Latin is not the strangest : the passive voice is the simplest EVER.
And you haven't to think about order of proposals, you can put the object before the subject.

And about latin's endings, it's similar to the French (the French is a latin language).

The reason I find Latin the most challenging language to learn and speak is because of the lack of auxiliary verbs. That's one thing I really like about English, you can just throw in a one-syllable verb tense changer and even if you get the verb wrong most people will know what you mean. Has, will, did, am- they're really handy little words. Latin lacks these, which means all words, both verbs and even nouns, need to be conjugated. And verb conjugation as pingoleon aptly demonstrated with tuer, is annoying.

Just look at this example, taken from http://www.netplaces.com/learning-latin/infinitives/constructing-an-indirect-statement.htm:

Caeser has a powerful army: Caesar exercitum potentem habet.
I hear that Caesar has a powerful army: Ego Caesarem exercitum potentem habē re audiī.

Yes,you actually have to conjugate his name! In English we just need to add the words 'I hear' or 'is said' to move to the indirect voice, but you have to change most words in the sentence to make it work in Latin. Most annoyingly, you can't 'fake' conjugation like in other languages either, and just use the infinitive (which is common for non-native speakers because the infinitive is fairly easy to remember), because sentence structure is much more fluid in Latin, placing the burden of semantics squarely on your conjugation!

I don't remember how to say it but the sentence "Romeo loves Juliet" can be reversed in Latin to mean the exact same thing because of the suffixes appended to both names.

Suffice to say, I've yet to master this tongue.

JustPingo #22

116 posts

Location France

Posted 28 June 2013 - 04:05 AM

I've never said that Latin is easier than English, but I said, easy < difficult : English < Latin < French.

oWave #23

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41 posts

Posted 28 June 2013 - 08:13 AM

pingoleon60, on 28 June 2013 - 04:05 AM said:
easy < difficult : English < Latin < French.

Add < German as last.
Do I really have to explain why?