language reform: linguaphiles

language reform

I'm an ESL teacher, and sometimes find myself profoundly irritated at certain aspects of English grammar because they are very difficult to explain (or come to sound silly in the explanation). Often, I've wished I could streamline English grammar, and the first thing that would go is the discrepancy between time and tense, esp. that of simple present (which can tell us about actions in the future but not those happening NOW!). I'd have both fact/habit and present action represented by simple present tense, as is true in so many other languages. This way, simple present and simple past could be a nice package, and students could transition easily from one to the other, staying in the comfortable zone of slightly inflected action verbs when their level is too low to introduce present progressive, or rather the concept of two types of present tense. Of course some semantic nuance would be lost, but my life would improve tremendously without that cluttery present progressive.

How would you change English if you could?

language reform

Anatomy of a "CUNT"

a Russian name for the letter Q

The Touchy Subject

Error

Anatomy of a "CUNT"

a Russian name for the letter Q

The Touchy Subject