The Awful German Language (1880)

Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by wheels on Sunday May 16, 2021 @11:23PM (#27179787)

Which 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.

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Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by schoen on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:43PM (#27187499)

I 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.

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