Saccadic Narcohypnia

So, here is a little pilot episode for a grammar youtube-thing that I have been considering for a long time. It’s clumsier than I would like because the basics of sound editing escape me and a lack of a real camera force me to rely on extremely ghetto means of composition. Windows Movie Maker and MS Paint being the ghettoest things I’ve ever worked with, but it is here and I’m hoping to do more.

Das Video:

The Script:

Saccadic Narcohypnia
“Relax, don’t be so tense”

“Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart: The effect doth operate another way.”

English is pretty weird. For example, if I want to pluralize thesis do I go with thesises or thesi or theses? What about Octopus? Octopuses? Octopi? Octopods? Octopussies? What is the past tense of Tweet? Twat, of course. So when you go to Twitter to Tweet you are Twatting all over the interwebs.

But yeah, English is a weird language. Here’s something fun:

Try to say something in the future tense of English. That is to say, try saying something without using a present tense verb form. You might think that you can do this by saying “Tomorrow I will go to the bank” but “Go” is still present tense. In this case what you have done is put the auxiliary verb “Will” to indicate future and that is not a real future tense. You see, it’s different in other languages like, say, Spanish. In Spanish you can take almost any present tense verb and add an -ar, -er or -ir and BOOM! you’re in the future. But in English if you wish to go 88 miles an hour you have to add an auxiliary verb. The closest you can get is “I will” and just leave the sentence at that. Yuck, right? Not that I wish to imply that English is deficient, we just do things a little differently.

In fact, all Germanic languages appear to have this problem as Wikipodia informs me that German only has one auxiliary verb with which to handle the entire future. This oddity in English is even more interesting when we consider that we do have past tense. Hell, most things written in English are in the past tense. Pick up any novel. Look on the internet. But we tend to speak in the present tense.

Some examples of tenses!

“I followed her into the store.” Past tense.
“I follow her down the aisles.” Present tense.
“I WILL follow her to the checkout.” Still present tense.
“I AM GOING TO follow her out to her car.” Again present tense.
“I just got maced.” Past tense, but with an auxiliary to indicate past.

Past tense works really well in English. Part of the reason is we’re used to it. Everything we read on the page is past tense, sure there are a few novels and short stories and all teleplays and film scripts are written in present tense, but I have NEVER read a story in the future tense. Because it can’t be done. And even if you were to attempt it with what passes for future tense the language would be clumsy. Imagine:

“Elizabet will be going down to the police station on Thursday. She will go because of a murder that will happen a few days from now. The murder will be brutal and she will forever remember how the blood will pool in the cracks on the street that the city workers are going to build.”

You can’t sustain that for very long. It labors like an extremely fat man running a marathon up Mount Vesuvius. You might be able to do it in a short story, because those can be incredibly dense. So, there’s a challenge for any who wish to try it. And if you are tense try to loosen up, ‘cause ain’t none of us getting to the future tense like that.