h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Kids here have to learn two foreign language at least. Usually it's English and German or Russian.

As about English - when I went to school we had Indefinite and Continious tenses, now there are Simple and Progressive.
So confusing for me.

Simple and Contiuous as far as I'm concerned

Or even 'Continuous'...

Where did all those new terms come from?

Probably some fight between rival lingistics firms.

Do they use the same terms in UK and US?

Yes, but, did you know, while I've seen simple, progressive and continuous used all over the shop by grammarians and coursebookwriters and the like, indefinite I've only heard from my students.

...who have basicly the same background I do.

A foreign language is compulsory at secondary level here. The problem is it is either taught badly/unimaginatively or kids drop it immediately after taking their GCSE no matter how good/bad their teacher has been. I expect there are Govt figures for how many go on to take a language at A level, but I suspect not many.

In the heart of UK IT land, our local paper regularly has adverts for IT positions preferably with French or German as a second language. I have suggested to No2 son that he brushes up his German.

I did French and German at school, many years ago. Now when we potter over to France I can only ever remember the word I want in German, not French. I also now have some very basic Italian to further confuse the word search. But Small Talk on my Palm helps.

I tend to be rather shy about attempting to speak another language, but my sad attempts have always been met with politeness and more often or not have been answered in English. So I have never really progressed beyond school level.

Just got back from seeing Matrix Reloaded. French came in handy...there's a wonderful character called "The Merovingian" (which made me and only me laugh) who swore in French. I and about 3 others in a packed theatre laughed.

Don't know what to say about this movie. There are parts of it that are absolutely BRILLIANT and parts that made me think "what the hell" and parts that required a math wizard. The special effects kick butt (I even ducked a couple of times), but you really can't carry a movie on butt kicking alone. I think I have to think about it.

[Amy] - Not tense, indefinitely, progressively or in any way. Do we really have those tenses in English? Why haven't we been told?

I just love speaking foreign languages! Er, perhaps that's one of the reasons why I am here.

Dare I admit that I haven't even seen the Matrix - let alone the second one? Hoovooloo sat me down once in front of his home entertainment system (a really boysy thing, black speakers all over the place, sounds from the back of the head, top notch tv, and all the gadgets) and made me watch the scene where they shoot-up the security guards - the memory of which warms the cockles of my heart every time I go through an airport. But I have never seen the actual movie as such.

Got a lot of domestic tidying to do, and a tadlet of paperwork. I am going to stay with my Private Life for a week, (I'll be with him in 32 hours, 20 minutes, but who's counting?) and I feel I ought to leave a level playing field behind me for my lodger.

B

You've met Hoovooloo? Is he as scary IRL?

That depends on what you mean by scary.

He is a show-off, he juggles with fire, (literally), and rides a monocycle. I invited him and his g/f to my 40th birthday party and in the middle of the fire juggling monocycle riding routine he told every bugger there that it was all rather strange for him, because he hadn't actually MET me before. Oh, and at the end of the party there were a group of about eight of us sittind around drinking, including some friends who have known me since I was 14 and my ex-husband. Hoo said "It is funny, I know some astonishingly personal stuff about Ben, but not the normal stuff, like where she went to university". I couldn't really tell if the ensuing silence was because everyone was tired and rather drunk, or because they were speculating on the astonishingly personal stuff he knows about me. My main thought at the time was "Thanks a f**king bunch, Hoo..."

Anyways, I regard the man as a friend: he has helped me out on more than one occasion, and he is actually extremely sensitive and very kind to people he likes. As I have said elsewhere here, I would stand back to back with him in a fight any day of the week.

B

That all sounds scary to me .

Technically we only have two tenses in English: The simple (or indefinite) present (I walk/she walks), and the simple (or indefinite) past (I/she walked).

Continuous 'tenses' (I had been walking/ I was walking/ I have been walking/ I am walking/ I will be walking/ I will have been walking) are actually aspects, and so are the perfect 'tenses' (I had walkled/been walking/ I have walked/been walking/ I will have walked/been walking).

There are no future tenses, only future forms, because even the simple future 'tense' uses a modal auxilliary (will) rather than messing about with the main verb, and because we can use pretty much everything to talk about the future:

If I won the lottery, I would buy a big car.
The concert starts at 6pm tomorrow.
I am meeting my brother for lunch later.
I've decided to go to Greece next summer.

... and so on. And actually we can use the future forms (which people think of as future tenses) to talk about the present and the past, which is nice.

However, if we are not being annally retentive about it there are (very approxoimately) about 11 distinct tenses in English and a few more structures with distinct uses, although that underestimates the case a bit because of the aforementioned way in which different structures can be used with entirely different ideas, in the same way that words can have different meanings.

You should never have asked that Amy...

*sits quietly and doesn't ask any more damn fool questions*

We had it somewhere in the second or third grade... Ages ago. Verbs act better in Estonian. Don't ask about nouns - 14 cases both in singular and plural...

So, apart from our different spellings and meanings for words that sound the same (whether and weather) grammatically English should be relatively easy to learn compared to German, say?

There was an article in the Sunday Times Travel supplement this week on TEFL and how to go about using it as a springboard to travelling. I have passed it on to No1 son, who expressed some interest.

We continue having trouble with the neighbour's getting in, yesterday he/she was helping him/herself to Cassie's kibble! I am sloping off to the pet shop in a minute to see if one of the smaller, newer magnet collar attachments will work with the old magnetic flap in the outside door.