Re: YSID

In article <KJBxqp.1ME0@xxxxxxxxxxx>, djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
In article <63ed008c-c00e-4d32-9c6f-09cf3c151207@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Paul Clarke <paul.clarke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 8 May, 11:51, netcat <net...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <KJApID.1...@xxxxxxxxxxx>, djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
As to tenses: Indo-European languages (all of them, AFAIK)
divide time into three boxes, past present and future.

Estonian, not being Indo-European, doesn't have a grammatical future
tense.

According to many linguists the Germanic languages, including English,
don't have a future tense either - see, for example, the Language Log
post at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=897. ObSF: one of the
comments on that post is from Suzette Haden Elgin.

It has a construction that serves as one.

English has its 'will' and 'shall' but we really don't. We could, in a
roundabout pinch, use the German "werden", translated, but that never
ends up sounding natural. In Estonian, it "rains today" and it "rains
tomorrow".

rgds,
netcat
.

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