Honey! Let's Conjugate a Verb!

Alert to censors! Despite the title, this article does NOT contain anything salacious, dirty, sexy, kinky or perverted. It is about English verbs and verb conjugation.

Alert to readers! Please keep reading anyway!

OK, conjugation. It sounds kinky, doesn't it? And we speak of "conjugal visits",.... but this is different. Conjugation is what we do to verbs. To make us tense. No, wait! We make the verbs tense, or something. But conjugating English verbs certainly can make us tense as well! There are so many verb tenses! And they have odd names! And even the SIMPLEST verb tenses in English are well.... weird!

Perhaps the simplest verb tense of all is the present tense. For example, the present tense of the verb "to eat" is "I eat", "you eat", "he or she eats", "we eat" and "they eat". Easy, right! But you would THINK we use the present tense to describe things in the present. You would think so. But you would be wrong, at least when it comes to English verbs. We use the present tense to describe things that happen in the past and future.

Don't believe me?

Suppose, like millions of Americans, you are desperate to gain weight. You go to see a nutritionist and he asks you about your eating. You say "Well, every morning I eat breakfast". You say this in the evening, when you are NOT eating breakfast! You're talking about what you do in the past (like this morning and yesterday morning) and plan to do in the future (tomorrow morning) and so, you use .... the present tense!

If you want to describe something that you are doing NOW you need what some call the present continuous tense: I am eating. (Well, right now I am writing, but you get the idea!)

Then there's the present perfect tense (perfect? Is it even good? And why aren't there any "excellent" tenses?). This involves one of the infamous helping verbs that English uses. That verb is "to have". That is "I have eaten". Where did "eaten" come from? Who knows! They call this PERFECT?

But we are just getting started with English verb tenses!

The simple past tense in English verbs can either be simple or not-so-simple. But it's past. So, "I ate breakfast" is fine, but if want to make it a question, we need to add "did". "Did you eat breakfast?" That's the not-so-simple past tense (Do NOT go looking for this tense. I just made it up).

There are LOTS more English verb tenses:

Past continuous - You were eating dinner when I asked you to conjugate a verb with me.

Present perfect continuous - You have been eating non-stop for 2 hours! Take a break!

Past perfect continuous - You had been eating too much fat before you started your diet.

Simple future - I will eat lunch later

and many more! Why, there is no end to how tense you can get with English verbs! There's the woulda shoulda coulda verbs.

You were 2 hours late to dinner! You should have been on time! I could have been eating, and, if I knew you would be late, I would have eaten!

But then there are tenses that I just dare you to name. Once, an Israeli friend asked me for the most complicated English verb tense. I thought a while and said "Should have had to have been": He got tense. He said "Huh?" (Which is the same in Hebrew!) And I gave this example.

Back in high school I got by without doing much work. I should have had to have been a better student.

So, relax! Conjugate away! English verbs are fun!