3 ms·
> But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language. The deceptive thing, though, is compound tenses and phrasal verbs;
by schoen 5y ago
> But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language.
The deceptive thing, though, is compound tenses and phrasal verbs; in both cases you express a meaning with multiple words that couldn't have been predicted from the meanings of the constituent words alone. These are both pervasive in English and both very tricky for learners, but they often don't feel like "grammar" because they're not inflectional. (Well, phrasal verbs are more like lexicon.)
- wheels 5y agoWhich European languages don't have compound verb tenses? All of the four I'm reasonably familiar with do. Germanic languages lean on them more than Romance languages (which have a wider breadth of non-complex tenses), but the concept isn't unfamiliar. Again, aside from the gerund, there's an almost one-to-one mapping in usage between English and German tenses. I don't speak any other Germanic languages than those two, but I'd assume that to be more broadly true in that family.
- schoen 5y agoI have the impression that English compound tenses and their nuances are harder than other European languages', although other languages definitely do have them. I eat breakfast I am eating breakfast I ate breakfast I was eating breakfast I have eaten breakfast I have been eating breakfast I had eaten breakfast I had been eating breakfast I would eat breakfast I would be eating breakfast I would have eaten breakfast I would have been eating breakfast I will eat breakfast I am going to eat breakfast I will be eating breakfast I am going to be eating breakfast I will have eaten breakfast I am going to have eaten breakfast I can't think of another European language that would idiomatically use (or maybe even require) quite this range of constructions.