Tuesday, October 7, 2014

An auxiliary verb doesn't really have any meaning by itself in an sentence but rather adds mood, aspect, or modality. For example, in English we add a "do" in questions: "Do you eat often?" German uses them too, but they fucked it up. The auxiliary verb is often really close to the verb it's helping in English because that's what makes fucking sense. It's like having an adjective right before or behind the noun it modifies. It'd be weird to have the noun ten words later. In English the perfect tense is subject + to have + past participle then you follow with the rest of the sentence. Sometimes you throw an adverb in there, but any more and it gets confusing. The Germans don't give a shit. They go subject + to have + past participle, but then they throw EVERYTHING in between to have and the past participle. So in English we'd say, "I've gone to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year," but in German they say, "I've to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year went." Why do that ever? I can understand languages sometimes put the verb at the end of the sentence like Latin or Japanese, or put it at the beginning like in Tagalog, but why ever separate the auxiliary verb and main verb like that? And you know the Germans also have problems with it because there have been studies that show when they read, they often flick their eyes to the end of the sentence to figure out what the hell is going on. It's your own fucking language and you can't handle this shit!

Another thing is they ONLY use the perfect form. Oh they have the simple past, but apparently no one says it aloud, only in writing. So while we'll say, "I went to the store in Brooklyn yesterday with my friends," they'll say, "I've to the store yesterday in Brooklyn with my friends gone."* Why. Why. Why. You have a much simpler form and this entire construction isn't necessary, but you decided to make it longer just for the hell of it.

* Actually, like with French some verbs involving movement use "to be" instead of "to have." So they'll say, "I am to the store gone." So weird.

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