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> Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself. There is no future tense in
by deanc 2y ago
> Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself.
There is no future tense in Finnish. Or gendered personal pronouns. Oh and there’s about a gazillion words for snow. And god help you if you need to articulate that your spruce is returning.
- ipqk 2y agoEnglish also doesn't have a (proper) future tense, but you would still need to learn how to talk about the future using the modal 'will'.
- deanc 2y agoIn English there is at least the means grammatically to express you're referring to the future (I'm going to the store, I will go to the store, I'm going to go to the store). In Finnish, it's entirely contextual and you can throw in timing words to help.
- jvvw 2y agoI confess I also read this thinking 'this person hasn't tried learning Finnish'. It's also trickier with more unusual languages because there aren't resources out there to the same extent as for more widely-spoken languages. I don't think there is an 'official' Memrise course for Finnish for example.
- ix101 2y agoOn the subject of tenses Turkish has a "reported past tense" which I haven't heard in other languages so far. It's very commonly used and simply denotes that someone told you of something that happened. I.e. you didn't witness / weren't present.
- uolmir 2y agoYou may enjoy this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality As an English speaker myself it's astonishing the number and range of features that other languages have built in, so to speak. Years ago I took Latin and the idea of declension just blew my mind. And that's basic in the grand scheme.