My Most Controversial Video...

[@buurmeisje]

I really doubt that is your most controversial take

[@kklein]

hard disagree. this is the most divisive thing i've ever said.

[@m1n3c4rt]

@@kklein this reply is by far the most divisive thing you've ever said

[@Iron_uksus]

​@@kkleinwell, you probably will say something more controversial, but we've established that there is no future, therefore there IS something more controversial, therefore this is not the most controversial statement

[@busdriverbuddha]

It's not a controversial take at all

[@SkyTheHusky]

@@kklein Remember the Chinese phonology video? Two vowels in Mandarin is definitely more controversial.

[@Elisaisafish]

Linguistics nerds are the pettiest people ever and i love that

[@cubicbanban]

I love petty disagreements between scholars!

[@jgjg5182]

Well obviously, they only ever argue semantics!

[@rowboat10]

@@jgjg5182 Should be "they _always_ argue semantics"

[@jgjg5182]

@@rowboat10 NERD

[@SylviaRustyFae]

​​​@@rowboat10 should be "They *will* always argue semantics"

[@franciscoflamenco]

I'm a non-native English speaker and this has always been an obvious fact to me, specially when I compare it with other languages I know that similarly have and don't have future tense. I was surprised to find out this is controversial.

[@LouisaN-n6m]

As a native Russian speaker I completely agree with you

[@aiocafea]

same, in the same way that speaking a language with cases, it seemed obvious to me that 'I/me' is not a distinction based on case i begin to also get the differing opinion, where this romance-based analysis is obvious for me, a speaker of a romance language but it may not be the most useful vocabulary and set of tools for describing english

[@vari1535]

@@aiocafea wait, why not? (why isn't "I/me" a case-based distinction?)

[@allanjmcpherson]

@@vari1535 I would assume because we don't have a fully fleshed-out case system. Though it's really debatable, but ultimately unimportant. We certainly used to have one, so you could argue it is on that basis. But we currently don't, so you could argue it isn't on that basis.

[@aiocafea]

​@@vari1535 i just looked it up and that was mostly a blunder of mine, the I/me distinction can usually be described by cases, just not the ones i know I speak a language with nominative+accusative+others, that would make 'It was we.' valid, but in English there is a subjective/objective distinction that holds most of the time, so it's just whichever is the grammatical subject, whichever is a grammatical object there do seem to me a huge number of exceptions that you just have to learn for the Nominative mind, like 'me, I like that' and you have to learn both that 'it is I' is the form that you're supposed to write, which would imply English is N/A, but nobody says 'that's I', they say 'that's me' implying it's a S/O language i would say it's still not fully case-based, as 'I and she are going to the store' sounds completely wrong even if both N/A and S/O would say those are the right pronouns, but 'She and I are going to the store' sounds more natural, implying 'and I' is just a learnt construction anyway, sorry for the long comment but basically, i meant there is no nominative-accusative distinction in current spoken english, but you can make an argument for the subject-object distinciton

[@PlatinumAltaria]

Trying to cram all world languages into structures designed for specifically and exclusively the Romance family will always lead to awkwardness. Collective tense-aspect-mood (TAM) is a more valid lens to look at this feature of human language than trying to take tense separately just because that's what the Romans did. English TAM is conveyed through a combination of conjugation and auxiliary verbs, which can dynamically produce a large variety of specific meanings.

[@handsoapinc]

Especially when English isn't a Romance Language, and like in K Klein's old video, the Modals are something that other Germanic Languages (German was the reference in the Video) also do. It's just a normal Germanic Trait that gets treated as Abnormal. It also doesn't stand out compared to the North Germanic (Nordic) or the Slavic families either. It just seems weird in the Romance perspective.

[@Alex-fv2qs]

Even in Romance languages these structures don't always work particularly great As a speaker of Rioplatense Spanish I natively use the equivalent of "going to Verb" as the future tense, while the simple future is all but abandoned for simply talking about the future and is more of a conditional

[@handsoapinc]

@@Alex-fv2qs It really is a fascinating change. But it's not the existence of a simple tense, but the existence of a grammaticalized future tense, that's of focus here. Even if the Future Simple gets replaced by a Compound Future (e.g. "hablaré" becomes "voy a hablar"; Present Tense, but still used to indicate Future Timeframes). If you still retain the likes of the Future Perfect (e.g. habré hablado) you can make the safe claim that Spanish has a clearly defined Future Tense. So we'd say that Spanish (like quite a few Languages) has multiple strategies to express similar information: A Future Tense and a Compound Future Tense. It's less the clear division of Simple-Past, Simple-Present, and Simple-Future; it's more the clear division of Past, Present, and Future (where Aspects and Moods get superimposed).

[@Alex-fv2qs]

@@handsoapinc The future perfect is another "improper" mode in rioplatense as it isn't actually talking in any way about the future either

[@pialba]

@@Alex-fv2qs a similar thing is happening in French, in casual speech we mostly use the "je vais faire" (= I'm going to do) form rather than "je ferai" which is more formal

[@nomihabo9752]

WE LOVE DOUBLING DOWN WITH FACTS AND EVIDENCE

[@Tasorius]

Facts that were made up by pedantic people and serve no real purpose.

[@cirodeandrade]

... Something made up by pedantics which serves no real purpose? Do you realise you've just described languages in general?

[@Tasorius]

@@cirodeandrade No. I am describing petty linguistics.

[@cirodeandrade]

So, what's "proper" linguistics, then? Please, enlighten us

[@Tasorius]

@@cirodeandrade Petty linguistics makes you use a different word instead of tense when talking about the construction that expresses the future in English, instead of still calling it the future tense, with a subcategory that states which type of future tense it is.

[@TreeM1984]

this video will now probably be the most controversial video...

[@artembaguinski9946]

and now in the future it has already willed.

[@voikalternos]

this comment section will be very tense

[@lonestarr1490]

You mean he'll have to do a response video to the discussion under this one?

[@mnm1273]

136 views in 2 minutes. You're on pace for 35,740,800 views in a year.

[@Cr_nch]

I swear I just saw a meme similar to this like three minutes ago before coming here

[@paulamarina04]

my 31 new husbands from this month really liked this comment

[@gallanosa]

4801 views in an hour = 105,141,900 in a year.

[@Laezar1]

hey congratz!

[@mapron1]

Do you using linear extrapolation instead of exponential? Most videos are get view in his first day

[@jasmijnwellner6226]

This is the kind of response video I'd love to see more of on youtube

[@mapron1]

No thank you. self responding? Reaction videos already a cancer, but this is another level, reaction to yourself. Original video at least was worth watching.

[@chuksk8592]

​@@mapron1 I thought it was clear from what the first couple minutes showed that it was in response to others tbh

[@BasiliskKingOfSerpents]

Ah, the “is Pluto a planet” debate but for linguistics.

[@notahumanhand4390]

Complete with one of the sides being objectively correct and yet there still being debate over it because people refuse to accept that as an answer!

[@a_worldly_man]

This is actually a pretty apt comparison. In both debates it really comes down to the difference between a formalized academic definition versus a colloquial definition.

[@BasiliskKingOfSerpents]

@@a_worldly_man Exactly! And personally, I think both definitions are useful to understand in their appropriate contexts.

[@rateeightx]

Honestly though, If Pluto isn't a planet, I'm yet to hear a convincing argument as to what it actually is. Is it a Dwarf Planet? Well news flash, A Dwarf Planet _is_ a Planet! Don't believe me? Just look at the name, Dwarf *Planet!* Check-Mate Astronomers!

[@joshuasgameplays9850]

@@BasiliskKingOfSerpents Just like how, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as a fish (either that, or you're a fish) It's still useful in everyday communication to describe the general concept of a fish, even if such a concept has so objective basis in reality.

[@TomiThemself]

Okay, I did not expect it - but yeah, you genuinely convinced me that "will" is not temporal but rather modal :O

[@thebaker8637]

It helps to consider the etymology. “will” originally had the same meaning as in German, ie. “to desire, to want”, which eventually developed into the future, as the word “want” moved away from its original meaning of “to lack, to miss” (ie. “for want of a nail”, “I shall not want”) to “I desire (that which I lack)”. Hence “as you will” (as you wish), “the car won’t start” (the car does not want to start), “my grandpa would always smoke indoors” (my grandpa always wanted to smoke indoors [and did]), and even “I will crush you” (I want to crush you [and I’m going to]), and literally the noun in contexts like “god willing”.

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

​@thebaker8637 There's a thing called "a will" which is a thing where you write your wants and desires for after your death

[@Heulerado]

​@@thebaker8637 Wait, is "will" as a noun with that definition not used anymore? I'm not native, but "losing the will to live", "will to power", "their will faltered", etc. Are all these just one of those phrases that have meaning as a whole, but not if the words are interpreted individually?

[@chuksk8592]

​@@Heulerado It's not entirely gone or left to be fossilised in phrases but it's kind of growing closer to that!

[@Heulerado]

@@chuksk8592 I was thinking that this was very weird because it's a very useful word, but then I remembered that the word "willingness" is way more common, which is pretty funny. It's like aquatic mammals, the noun "will" was used to make the adjective "willing", people forgot about the noun and used the adjective to make the noun "willingness". I'm sure this has a name.

[@dayalasingh5853]

I remember Hank Green said something very useful in a video on if fish were animals and he said something like "it turns out a lot people think different words mean different things but it's also helpful if we agree some words mean the same thing, in this case animal does not mean mammal which is why we have these different words". Like my syntax classes are hard enough and different syntacticians seem to agree on so little, if the meaning of tense was one of those things I think I'd just die.

[@Envy_May]

that's semantics babeyy

[@tuluppampam]

To be fair, English usually distinguishes between land and water animals, or fish and animals. There's also the fact that lots of vegetarians eat fish, because that's not considered an animal. Semantics is weird and very flexible (pragmatics).

[@rateeightx]

Honestly even if Animal did mean Mammal, some Fish would be Animals because Mammals are Fish. Aquatic Mammals especially, there is genuinely no definition that would disqualify say a Whale from being a Fish without disqualifying other fish or completely arbitrarily excluding Mammals (Or Tetrapods in general) because you feel like it. Aquatic Vertebrate? Whales are Fish. Must be able to breathe underwater? (Most) Lungfish aren't fish. Can't give live birth? Sharks aren't fish. Can't be Endothermic (Warm-Blooded)? Tuna aren't fish. If you can give me a solid definition of Fish that includes all things traditionally considered fish, but excludes Cetaceans by a reasoning other than simply stating that Mammals/Tetrapods cannot be Fish, I will... Not actually give you money because honestly that'd be a lot of effort and I don't know how to transfer money digitally, but if it were less effort I'd straight up give you 10 dollars, Instead I suppose I shall simply give you great admiration.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@tuluppampam They're not vegetarians; they're pescatarians

[@tuluppampam]

@@Anonymous-df8it many that call themselves vegetarians eat fish, which means that sometimes vegetarian is a synonym of pescatarian (descriptivism)

[@handsoapinc]

I feel like a lot of the claim about English having a Future Tense, only really make sense from an English perspective. When you study foreign Languages that have a clear Past/Non-Past distinction, it's easy to see how these Languages lack a Future Tense. Yet they still have plenty of strategies for Future Statements. I like Polish as an example, because it lacks a Future Tense, but it has two Future Constructions. An Aspect System (Non-Past Tense + Perfect Aspect) or a Compound Future (Non-Past Tense + "I will"). It's pretty easy to look at Polish's "Compound Future" and see parallels to English. And in the Polish example, the 'Compound' bit is made more obvious by the fact everything else is properly conjugated to Past and Non-Past, with the sole exception being "to be". I think people that only speak English, and are most familiar with English, are the most likely to refute the idea that English has no Future Tense, mostly on intuitive grounds. Because it sorta "makes sense" to describe English in terms of three time-frames. But English doesn't have a Future "Tense", only a Future "Time-Frame".

[@kklein]

brilliant, no comments

[@Arcangel0723]

@@kklein I have always found it funny when someone comments "no comments" which in and of itself is a comment. Maybe it is short for "I have no comments past that which I have just made" lol

[@arthurgabriel2625]

Polish actually has 2 ways of making the compound future tense. The first is by using the future tense of to be(być) and the infinitive of a verb. Ex: ja będę robić And the second one is also by using the future of to be, however, instead of adding an infinitive of a verb, it will use the past tense conjugation of it. Ex: ja będę robił

[@handsoapinc]

@@arthurgabriel2625 I didn't know about the infinitive form conjugation. Only the past tense.

[@SylviaRustyFae]

​@@Arcangel0723 no comment

[@AmyThePuddytat]

It’s obvious that ‘will’ got classified as a tense simply because people wanted a simple drop-in translation for the actual future tenses in French and Latin. The same with ‘would’. Since French and Latin use a verb similar to ‘can’ to express what we express with ‘can’ in English, there is never any suggestion that this is some sort of tense or mood or whatever. If French and Latin had a verbal inflection that expressed desire (e.g. _je mangereux, nous mangeroulons_ ) then we would all be listing ‘I want to eat’ amongst the English moods and tenses just like ‘I will eat’ and ‘I ate’.

[@Tasorius]

Or perhaps it is a tense that is formed with an auxiliary verb, instead of a suffix... as it primarily conveys a future event.

[@AmyThePuddytat]

@@Tasorius Watch the effing video.

[@Tasorius]

​@@AmyThePuddytat I did, and the future tense still exists in English. It is just formed in a different way than the past tense.

[@steffahn]

Apparently a term for such a mood exists; it is "desiderative mood".

[@steffahn]

To name another example: I suppose, if Latin didn't have prepositions itself, we'd probably also call every noun with a preposition in English as having a "case". A case that's just formed with an auxiliary word instead of a case ending. Or - well - on second thought, we'd probably even go further and just call it a case for those prepositions that would happen to somewhat match the [in this scenario likely way more than 5] Latin cases, whilst calling the remaining prepositions something entirely different, for no particular reason.

[@idontknowwhattonamethischa4592]

This still doesn't change why Malaysia's biggest export are electrical and electronic products (E&E Products)

[@mapron1]

Ehm... and why?

[@DEMEMZEA]

Why would it

[@jimmulaneyfue]

so true!!!

[@the5002ndpanda]

​@@mapron1I think the punchline is that it's a non-sequitur in relation to the video.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@the5002ndpanda No; I think someone is trying to promote something

[@AquaMoye]

As a non-binary person, thanks for your unwavering support on this issue. It delights me to watch your dedication to the issues that truly matter.

[@kklein]

you're welcome, I will never back down on this

[@sayven]

Why did I think this was gonna be about tense being a social construct 😂

[@camelattejeans88]

​@@sayveni mean all of language is a social construct lol

[@ihategoogle-fr7zf]

@@sayven time is a social construct the present is relative to the observer depending on their speed and position in spacetime all moments are real and the flow of time is an illusion

[@Ann-mj4xn]

​@@sayvenI mean... It's not like tenses exist as physical objects in the world

[@emilinamilgram6374]

The interesting thing is that when I was learning English I was taught that "will" was both a future tense and a modal verb

[@Cae_the_Kitsune]

Is "will" actually more certain than "going to"? Those both sound equally certain to me.

[@kklein]

in the specific example given, definitely in my opinion. however, they can switch in certainty based on certain circumstances. take "I'll go shopping" - could function as a suggestion, there's some leeway here "I'm gonna go shopping" - set in stone, said as you're on your way out the door, already in the process of "going to go shopping"

[@samagraarohan2513]

​@@kkleinI feel like the first sentence seems less certain because of how it's used by people, and not because it actually is. On a side note, expanding "I'll" to "I will" gives it the same level of seriousness again

[@angeldude101]

​@@kklein "gonna" While "gonna" is well known as a contraction of "going to", what kind of object would it be considered if analysed as a standalone word. It's _almost_ a modal verb, but it still needs to be prefixed with a form of "be", revealing its origin as being formed from a gerund. Many contractions have similar questions that can be asked. In some cases it almost feels like adding new inflectional morphology to the language that either wasn't there before or might've been lost at some point.

[@maciejlehr4874]

I definitely learnt that to be the case in school, though to this day I don't "feel" that to be the case. I know that doesn't mean much since I'm not a native Anglophone, but I'd argue that I have a pretty native-like understanding and confidence regarding English and yet this aspect of it I still haven't internalised

[@shambhav9534]

@@kklein I think it's made so by the fact-and someone in the comments pointed this out-that etymologically, "will" is related to "want", but nowadays, it's becoming a vanilla word to express the future. Hence, two different levels of certainties.

[@gljames24]

Prescriptivism gets a bad rap. It is very useful in the sciences. You need a very strict definition that helps create perfect dichotomies and other relations that can be very useful. Grammar and naming can be descriptivist, but categorization should be at least a little prescriptive.

[@CerealGamingTV]

prescriptivism is useful in the sciences because of its predictive capability. doing so for some field on principle when it doesnt adequately predict behaviours isnt useful.

[@noamtashma617]

But... You can't do prescriptivism in moat sciences. You can't prescribe to the world what its rules of physics _should_ be; you can't prescribe to a molecule what reactions it _should_ be doing. It doesn't make sense. It only makes sense in linguistics, because you're studying current human behavior, and people might try to follow a rule just because someone told it to them. But, if you're talking about prescriptivism towards scientific jargon, then actually it's not even that uncommon for different papers to have different definitions for the same word. The author might think that their own definition is better, for whatever reason. The most important thing is only that the aithor clarify any non-standard definition they use. The second most important is that they don't do it in a way that creates unnecessary confusion.

[@soryaaza7362]

As an ESL teacher, I've always taught the future as one of the modal verbs, because it fits this category the most

[@noamtashma617]

teaching ESL to english speakers or teaching english to ESL signers?

[@soryaaza7362]

@@noamtashma617 English as a second language to Spanish native speakers

[@marcella8576]

@@noamtashma617 I'm pretty sure english sign languages are referred to as ASL (american sign language) or BSL (british sign language). I've only heard ESL meaning english second language.

[@sponge1234ify]

​@@marcella8576english sign language are not "referred to" as asl or bsl; those two are different languages.

[@Ruminations09]

One of the funniest comparisons for me on this matter is Japanese. Japanese also doesn't have a grammatical future tense, but unlike with English, nobody pretends that Japanese does have a grammatical future. So when learning the tense system, after it's explained that they just distinguish between past and non-past tense in Japanese, one of my classmates was like "that's so confusing, why don't they just do it like us". And when I tell you that I had to bite my tongue to avoid blurting out that they literally do use tenses exactly like us...

[@maxim_ml]

I disagree. There's no commonly used grammatical construction to indicate the future in Japanese, not even something like the non-obligatory German "werden" ～みる come to mind, but the future is only an additional semantic

[@kasane1337]

@@maxim_ml So...where's the disagreement?

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@maxim_ml The real difference between non-past and present/future is that you can non-past can be used for both present and future depending on context clues, but you can include nouns that already conveys time like "tomorrow, today, next week, next year, etc" if you want to make sure that it's about the future or present if it would be confusing by context. While for example, in english you need to inclued specific words to convey future meaning in a mandatory way. So english pretty much has a future tense even if you not change the form of the main verb.

[@thebaker8637]

@@tovarishchfeixiao My flight leaves tomorrow is a clear counterexample, just to name one.

[@henricmezzomolima4199]

In japanese if you want to say "I will travel" you just say "I travel"(旅行する) and people just have to understand by context that you're talking about the future. Most of the time this is pretty obvious and there is no ambiguity, as there would be no other interpretation. You can add other words like "tomorrow" or "often", to be more clear if you want.

[@EmmaMaySeven]

As a linguist, I would like to point out how special English is: verbs don't have future tense, but nouns do: "he'll call me later" and "the sun'll shine tomorrow". The _future_ him calls and the _future_ sun shines. This is absolutely the only way to analyze these facts and I'll be collecting my Nobel Prize for Linguistics shortly.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

That's definitely the correct interpretation, also the apostrophe is a letter of the alphabet /j

[@kklein]

ahahaha yeah I engaged in this analysis a little a couple years ago in my Wolof video if you'd be interested in that

[@nixel1324]

@@PlatinumAltaria I'll concede it's a letter, but it certainly isn't in any alphabet I've ever learned.

[@Just_A_Banana]

​@@nixel1324 /j means joking if you didn't know

[@angeldude101]

Usually contractions are just expanded to their original forms when parsing, but interpreting them as their own distinct thing marked things so much more weird, complicated, and wonderful. Some romance languages drop pronouns because the information is contained in the verb? English you can argue inflects the _noun_ (including pronouns) letting you "drop" the _verb._

[@georgios_5342]

Funnily enough in Turkish "can" is also a suffix, and some people consider it a tense there. "I will go" is gideceğim, "I can go" is gidebilirim, "I will be able to go" is gidebileceğim. But I believe that not all suffixes are considered tenses, so, yeah Edit: I mixed up git with gel originally, thanks to the kind person who corrected me

[@omerosmanaksu5128]

Should be "gidebilirim" and "gidebileceğim." Also, I haven't encountered people considering -abilmek as a tense, but I'm not very knowledgeable about it.

[@eshaanbhargavpatel1768]

That's a mood.

[@prywatne4733]

this suffix is not a tense but it's a related thing called a mood (this one is the Potential mood if I'm not mistaken), I think he talks about Tense-Aspect-Mood in his original video if I remember correctly

[@georgios_5342]

@@omerosmanaksu5128 yeah I mixed it up, I'll correct it in the initial comment so it makes sense

[@13thk]

As a native speaker, I haven't seen anyone consider -ebil, -eyaz, -ekal, -egel, -iver as a tense. They are very obviously their own thing. And the -e(insert verb) is a pattern that is very clear. Even though there are only a few of these. They transparently originate from verbs. Ek: bil (know) in the case of -ebil. If you ask anyone if it is one, they'll say no (sample size: the 7 people in the house right now). And it is taught in school as a _kip_ (mood) not as a _zaman_ (tense), so anyone with an education higher than middle school 7th grade should know it.

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

Hey, quick question: Why does being a modal verb construction stop the "English Future" from being analysed as a future tense? Or, perhaps, if I may ask a different question - why can't the category of "modal constructions in English that use the modal verb 'will'" be analysed as containing "The English Future Tense" (in comparison to other related languages, such as French and Spanish), plus some other things"?

[@PlatinumAltaria]

In traditional grammar "tense" is the inflection of a verb to mark temporal relations to the speaker. This reveals the flaw of tense as a concept.

[@tuluppampam]

This is because linguists enjoy having different names for different constructions, distinguishing between SEMANTIC and GRAMMATICAL. In this case, it is semantically a future tense, but grammatically it makes little sense to call it a tense because it doesn't ONLY (or mostly) refer to the future. I hope this clears things up.

[@somnvm37]

I feel like the idea that this inconsistency throws out the whole future tense makes no sense. saying "I am going tomorow" doesn't specify tense at all, only the context [word tomorrow] shows it's the future. Afaik that's how arabic shows temporal context. "i will ..." uses 1 specific word like a normal modal verb. Every other example in the video was just different expressions that are also popular for the future.

[@Kiyoliki]

Because that boils down to "If a language can express the future, it has a future tense" which isn't true.

[@SofosProject]

I agree with your point that "will" and similar verbs are used in ways that don't indicate a future tense, but I think as far as their utility, it's a bit nitpicky to say that they don't at all count as future tense. In cases where "will" indicates an action in the future, it is acting as a future tense verb. When it's not doing that, it's not a future tense verb. Anyway, today I learned what a modal verb is, so thanks for that. ^_^

[@prywatne4733]

this is your controversial video? I thought everyone agrees that English is past/non-past and will is a modal verb, and the "future tense" is only used by L2 teachers in non-English speaking countries as a simplification.

[@crptpyr]

Nope, "future tense" is what native English speaking kids are taught in school too, so pretty much everyone figures the tenses in English are past/present/future until they think too hard about it

[@Reletr]

I still find this video hard to agree with, and I think it's because the way I learned what tense means is more to how it's used in the literary world, rather than linguistics. While English is a past/non-past language as you say, it's not really useful to say "You need to put this sentence in the non-past instead" if say you're giving feedback to someone's writing. It's more useful to distinguish between present and future to know what kind of construction to use. In a similar vein, I see the present perfect tense as past tense becuase of what exactly it refers to, not because of how it's conjugated. Probably influencing my views on this as well, Japanese is also a past/non-past language, but unlike English does not have a specific construction to talk about the future. 「寝る。」can mean both "I sleep" and "I will/am going to sleep", and thus is context dependent as to what time reference it's referring to, whereas in English it's not because of the construction with "will/going to".

[@holaliceanos]

Yes, but strictly speaking is still wrong to call it future tense. You don’t have to know linguistics, every dictionary will briefly tell you the same thing. It’s not that it is useful, but rather all of you are USED TO call like that. About you mentioning Japanese context-based future and comparing it to English's “future tense”, that’s simply not the case. Again, it suffices with consulting a dictionary. Tense is a set of forms taken by the verb to indicate the time. Does the verb to talk have a future form or any verb at all? Tense has to do with morphology, not with syntax

[@ConstantijnII]

Alright, the matter is closed. Nobody disagree with Klein anymore! I love this video. Doubling down with good arguments, facts and evidence is the only agreeable kind of doubling down.

[@monemori]

Good stuff, king. Kind of related: would you consider making a video about the "chat is a 4th person pronoun" take that made its rounds online some months ago? I swear that shit traumatized all of linguistics tumblr forever lmao

[@KabalFromMK9]

What even is a "4th person pronoun" or "4th person perspective" for that matter

[@monemori]

@@KabalFromMK9 Nothing. It's not a thing lol. Sometimes you'll see obviative being referred to as a "4th person", but it's just another type of third person. People love to make things up and pretend they know about linguistics when they actually don't, is all lol

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@monemori I thought it meant "hypothetical person" (e.g., "one" as a pronoun)

[@monemori]

@@Anonymous-df8it That's still third person!

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@monemori Really?!

[@valentinmitterbauer4196]

In german, the modal construction of "will + [verb]" is a way to express desire (normally translated with "to want to [verb]) and i think this is how it became a temporal marker in english: originally, it was only supposed to express *aim*, not inevitability like the "original" german future tense. "Ich will trinken" means "I want to drink" but "I will drink" means "Ich werde trinken" So, while germans will use will to want, english speakers will use will to will.

[@thebaker8637]

and then to dig into it more, “werden” in German as a main verb means “become, turn into, get”, from which *it* got the future meaning via semantic extension: Den Kindern ist (es) kalt. - The children are cold. Den Kindern wird (es) kalt. - The children are getting cold. Es ist heißer. - It’s warmer. Es wird heißer. - It’s getting warmer. Wir sind glücklich. - We are happy. Wir werden glücklich. - We will (become) happy. This is incidentally similar to Hungarian where “lesz” primarily means “become” with its own past tense (lett) but it also is used as the future form of the copula.

[@jopeteus]

In Swedish "vill" also means "to want"

[@tomaikenhead]

the distinction in english is really will/shall. “i will go” originally indicated desire to go as in other germanic languages, whereas “i shall go” indicated necessity to go. then they both began implying the future, but with different moods. will go = “I am going in the near future and I want to” ; shall go = “I am going in the near future and must”. then shall began to be used less frequently and will took over the future auxiliary role while largely losing its sense of “want”. schoolteachers often teach shall as a first-person future auxiliary - i/we shall vs you/they will (though this construction is very dated). when i write formally, i still maintain the “want” sense of “will” and use it only in future constructions where desire is included. for obligatory moods, i use must, shall, or another construction.

[@Tasorius]

Everything that expresses the future is uncertain. You can make a statement about what you will do and then the world could end before you do it.

[@SketchyTigers]

For a linguistics channel, I really dont understand people being so taken aback at you saying "will" isnt really a future tense. It was one of the first things we were taught in my syntax class.

[@kklein]

shhhhhhh don't tell them. i like the aesthetic of being contrarian and anti-establishment 😔😔 my career will be over when they find out that my hot takes are really just syntax 101 lesson 2

[@SketchyTigers]

@@kklein LMAO alright alright ill keep quiet 💀

[@roggeralves94]

Constructions like "The car won't start" have always been fascinating to me... In Portuguese, my native language, you have to use the present tense for that: "O carro não liga"

[@mistermistery4097]

3:29 The PC ("J'ai joué") is more often used for the simple past to be fair to you, but I wouldn't say it's completely different because it can also carry this "retrospective present" meaning, i.e. "J'ai joué au football toute ma vie

[@AvaEvaThornton]

I wouldn't interpret "It's going to rain tomorrow" and "It will rain tomorrow" as expressing different levels of certainty

[@holaliceanos]

the sun it’s going to explode vs the sun will explode

[@j.r.8176]

I would

[@shambhav9534]

@Tom_Het In that case, "going to" sounds more certain.

[@nicfarrow]

I would, and I would consider them in reverse to that stated in this video.

[@Derverruckte03-sz3xo]

Regarding my own native language (Spanish) it's weirder, because in fact we have the "future tense" Yo comeré / Tu comerás / El/ella comerá / Nosotros comeremos / Ustedes comerán. But if you dig futher you realize that the future tense in Spanish is a simplification of a periphrastic tense with the auxiliary verb "haber" Yo he de comer / Tu has de comer /El ha de comer / Nosotros habremos de comer / Ustedes han de comer. You just dropped the "h" at the beginning and add the rest to the ending of the verb and there you have the future tense, but idk if it is indeed a future "tense"

[@holaliceanos]

En español moderno si me atrevería a decir que existe un tiempo de futuro porque antiguamente se podía jugar con esa construcción y ahora no. Podías poner haber antes o después, etc. (creo que hay dos instancias en el Cantar del Mio Cid en que se puede apreciar esto). Ahora no, haber está totalmente fijo después del verbo principal, de suerte que no puedes separarlos. Me recuerda a la evolución sintáctica del adverbio latino magno opere/magnopere. Otra razón importante es que ningún nativo conceptualiza comeremos como comer hemos o trabajaré como trabajar he, es decir, ya no se trata de una construcción si no definitivamente de una sola palabra. Basta con decir “Trabajaré” para indicar el futuro (y la persona). Pero no basta con decir “Work” por ejemplo. Los mismos gringos entienden will con un verbo auxiliar, así que…

[@Sonnen_Licht]

It's useful to distinguish "tense" and "time" in language. These are different concepts: "tense" is a grammatical concept, while "time" is a semantic concept. Those two can sometimes go together neatly, but sometimes they don't. "Present tense" often describes "present time events", but they don't necessary have to. Let's take an example: "I'll text you when I get there". "Get" is an action in a future time, but we don't call it "future tense". I think everyone will agree that "get" is in "present tense" even though it's a future event.

[@maxim_ml]

agree

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

But you need the "will" to give the sentence a future meaning, even if the other verb not changes it's form for the tense. And you can't really make future meaning in english without using a very specific set of word options. So it's a future tense even if the main verb doesn't change.

[@thebaker8637]

@@tovarishchfeixiao Yes you can. “My flight leaves tomorrow.” “The conference starts in two hours.” “This train calls at all stations.” “I need to run, the uber’s here in a minute.” etc. etc. You can even use the present continuous “The plumber’s coming in the evening.” “I’m only staying for 5 days.” etc.

[@thebaker8637]

@@tovarishchfeixiao “My flight leaves tomorrow.” “Gotta run, the uber’s here in two minutes.” “This train calls at all stations.” “The shop closes in 30 minutes.” “The pub quiz starts in an hour.”

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@thebaker8637 You literally spamming me with sentences where you state the time itself already. But you surely can't do it without extra verbs or words like "tomorrow", "in 1 minute" etc. If english really doesn't have a future tense then you should be able to make future without extar verbs and things that specifically states a time. Oh you can't? Thought so. Because if you not have a future tense then you should be able to tell the future only from context clues without anything that specifies the thing to be in the future. But i guess it might be too much to comprehend for you guys.

[@hkrohn]

I haven't watched the original video, but I understand why it's controversial. You present a lot of examples of why future tense isn't really future, but how does that differ from any other language? For example, Spanish is a language with morphological future tense (I see that, completely randomly, only morphology counts for you as a part of grammar), but all your semantic examples from English apply to Spanish too. So your conclusion is that no language in the World has future tense?

[@half.full.cup.of.coffee]

agree with the comment of the month, but that’s also why I’m here

[@mapron1]

I couldn't tell if this comment made by toptist or frontist

[@cherrybramble]

Native english soeaker here, I totally agree. I hated my foriegn language classes because the way teachers would sort of bend the rules to explain the language's structure, *and thus explain it incorrectly and in a way which excludes the fundamental mechanisms that I need to learn for my future within that language*, it was fucking awful.

[@johannschmitt4674]

the video doesnt really prove your point as you said in the video words can mean anything but theres a difference between callin a tabel a chair and will a futuer tense and thst is that the idea that most peolpe have of what the word means is the one you are arguing is wrong most people when they think of the coset of futer tense would think that anything showing information about the futer is futer tense so shorely it is more a flaw in your definition of the word tense if it contadicts the meaning that most people would undertand it by. also why does whether or not it is a modal verb matter could it not be both a model verb and futer tense

[@bliblablu]

"grammaticalized time reference" is sometimes also used for purposes other than indicating time. For example, in Italian the future tense is also used to make assumptions and state hypotheses. Much like the fox will hunt rabbits example.

[@jakubk.417]

Now look at Czech, which can sometimes make a morphological tense on a verb and other times needs a modal verbs

[@prywatne4733]

interesting here in Polish all tenses are like actual tenses (morphological tenses), this is mostly due to the "to be" verb used to form the past tense has collapsed into suffixes (compare Czech jsem vyrobil and Polish wyrobiłem, or jsem byl to byłem, you can see the -em from jsem went to the end of the participle), the only debate in Polish is whether the compound future is a tense or not, I think it's just an expression using the only verb with future tense that being "być"

[@CallMeChrisOfficial]

​Adding onto that: 1. Morphologically speaking and excluding the verb "to be", the polish language only has two tenses: past and non-past. The future is expressed thanks to aspect. The non-past imperfective has a present meaning, while the non-past perfective has a future perfective one. In order to create a future imperfective meaning, one must use the auxiliary verb "to be", putting all of the conjugation on it and conjugate the lexical verb for the imperfective aspect, third person and grammatical gender or use the infinitive. 2. The suffixes still behave like separate words. They don't shift the stress and can be separated from the verbs. Here are some examples of it on the verb "to be" in 1st person singular masculine: Past: byłem - jam był Present: jestem - jam jest Conditional: byłbym - bym był The last one is quite common, while the rest is mainly used for poetical reasons.

[@thebaker8637]

@@prywatne4733 but then you can also see those suffixes aren’t REALLY part of the verb morphologically because they can move and attach to conjunctions, pronouns, and just about anything else. In the following, the first variant is commonly used: I would like… Ja bym poprosił Ja poprosiłbym Lest we forget Żebyśmy nie zapomnieli Że nie zapomnielibyśmy and then there’s more archaic variants, where nowadays the second one would be more common, the first one is archaic: I am the Lord, your God… Jam jest Pan, twój Bóg… Ja jestem Pan, twój Bóg… Why have you forsaken me? Czemuś mnie opuścił? Czemu mnie opuściłeś? Because I am still young Bom jeszcze młody Bo jeszcze jestem młody

[@thebaker8637]

@@CallMeChrisOfficialYou beat me to it, but also the perfective does not have to have a future meaning, although it usually does. Im więcej piwa wypije, tym bardziej jestem pijany. Here the perfective form is used (wypić instead of pić) but the meaning of this sentence is more like “the more beer I have, the drunker I become” with no future time reference (the sentence is more literally “the more of the beer I finish drinking, the drunker I am”, which kinda elicits the perfective).

[@CallMeChrisOfficial]

@@thebaker8637 Powinno być "Jam jest Pan Bóg twój...", a lepszym przełożeniem na współczesny polski byłoby "Jestem Panem Bogiem twoim...".

[@languagejones6784]

This is delightful

[@obj_in_motion]

If "will" is a tense then Chinese has tenses. And it's generally agreed that Chinese is a tenseless language.

[@scribblecloud]

wait so does german not have a future tense either? because id translate "i will" directly into "ich werde" so is that both not future tense? or does it just magically turn into one because it switched languages? why? Im so confused

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

I don't see how "It will rain tomorrow" is more certain than "it's gonna rain tomorrow". I think there's a subtle difference but i don't think that is it. Semantically, any sentence I can think of that uses "will" or "going to" to indicate a future event has an equal amount of certainty. "If you keep on like this, you're going to lose your job" "If you keep on like this you'll lose your job" "if you keep on like this, you WILL lose your job" In all cases, the speaker expresses a certainty.

[@m.s.5370]

I love watching linguistics videos on KZbin, (they were actually my first introduction into the topic before I was old enough to enroll in a university and become a linguistics student), and I'm beginning to notice a pattern whenever linguistic data about the way language subconsciously works is brought up. Time and time again, people will get incredibly defensive, even aggressively so, about the way they think they speak their native language when the truth is counterintuitive. A recent example that comes to mind is a video by Ling Otter (or something like that, I don't remember the name perfectly) about allophones in Spanish. For instance, how the d will be pronounced as a voiced dental plosive when preceded by a consonant, but softened into more of a dental fricative when preceded by a vowel. A common example of this is the initial D in dedo vs. a dedo, which in the first instance, is distinct from the second D, as the second one is always preceded by a vowel. In the second instance, where the same phonetic environment exists for both D's, they sound alike. But due to the fact that these are allophones and thus practically unnoticable to L1 speakers unless pointed out, many Spanish native speakers commented under that video that this is misinformation and to not believe him, forcing him to do a followup video adressing the comments (who were ironically spreading misinformation by claiming his claims to be misinformation). And now the same happened to you. Just goes to show how important language is to people, I guess, and how deeply we care about it

[@Katze0]

I don't know English very well, but is there any opinion that English has only one tense? Seeing the present as unmarked.

[@sambarron1712]

Given that "I'm [verb]ing at [time]" is more grammatical then "I will [verb]..." for my ideolect (and many people I know), I have to agree with you here

[@Tasorius]

When talking about grammar, please get simple things like "then" vs "than" correct...

[@ractheraccoon]

she [verb] on my [noun] till i [verb]

[@Just_A_Banana]

​@@Tasorius Yeah everyone should know the difference between two words that are completely irrelevant to this debate and your point completely destroys this argument!

[@Tasorius]

@@Just_A_Banana It's just a bit ironic that you didn't get a basic spelling right when talking about linguistics...

[@Just_A_Banana]

@@Tasorius Grammar nazi much?

[@spiller194]

The grammar teachers of my English degree referred to it as 'future reference' which I think is probably the best way to describe it. There's no grammatical future tense in English, but it does have future reference

[@believeinpeace]

Thanks!

[@TheStellarJay]

Haters just got absolutely shit on

[@CJLloyd]

I remember posting on the last video. I have a linguistics degree, so I should have known better, but I was among the dissenters. I subsequently, very quickly, learned that I was wrong. As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I knew what this video would be about. I'm glad you took the time to make it! Thanks!

[@kklein]

it's okay, it's from the objectively worst part of linguistics... syntax

[@wilsonli5642]

Wait, so is present perfect or past perfect not considered a "tense" separate from the past tense or present tense? I think that would be the decisive argument, because French, Spanish etc. also have helping verbs that form those tenses. Or whatever they are. (Verb forms?)

[@wihatmi5510]

Isn't there also this relation that proves your statement? can - able to must - have to may - allowed to will - going to

[@tempy2440]

A table can be a chair for lack of other sitting surfaces though

[@rummskartoffel8250]

I remember being unconvinced last time (though I don't remember why), but I have to say I agree now. Maybe it was the examples, or maybe I just wasn't paying attention then. Consistently analysing those constructions as modal verbs does in fact make more sense.

[@djsmeguk]

See you all in the next comment section in a few months when this comes up again!

[@yaakarkad1]

It’s actually the same in Arabic. Despite being considered one of the most difficult languages to learn (which, as someone who speaks a dialect of that language I can confirm), standard Arabic conjugation is surprisingly easy. There’s the past, the present and the imperative tenses. You just add a prefix to the present verb to make it future.

[@solarflarecj1067]

Thought we only had these debates for Japanese, but nope English has is too lmao

[@khoanguyen0001]

Yesterday was Friday. Today is Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday. There you have it. If you cut out all the noises like probabilities, this is what you get.

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

Love the title. Immediately expected the plot twist though.

[@ryla-ci7rn]

i’m not an expert on this and i probably shouldn’t say anything but i consider english to have three tenses with two being actual, by definition tenses and the other being a sort of actor of a tense to allow people speaking english to describe the future without using any additional words (to the language). like, it’s not “real,” but it serves a very functional purpose by describing what will happen in the future and is thus grouped with the present and past tenses

[@countyfacts6920]

"It's going to rain" and "it will rain" have the same degree of certainty. Should or Might would change it to less certain. Other than that great video! And I agree!!!!!

[@cheshire1]

What exactly makes german "Ich habe gespielt" different from english "I have played"?

[@dnyalslg]

Man, you just come here and kick the hornet’s nest and then leave.

[@the_neutral_container]

German doesn't have a proper future tense either so we too resort to creative use of the present tense in rather the same way as depicted above.

[@modmaker7617]

Polish has past and non-past tenses like English. English isn't unique.

[@kklein]

it's a very common system cross linguistically, maybe i should have mentioned that in the video (i think i did in the last one). german, dutch, the scandinavian languages and japanese are a few other examples of such a system

[@vytah]

I'd disagree: 1. At least the verb być has three distinct tenses that cannot be analysed differently 2. The future imperfect tense is formed differently than any modal construction (no modal can be followed by the L-participle) or literally any present tense construction (the L-participle never occurs in any present tense constructions)

[@modmaker7617]

​@@vytah Być is an irregular verb. When you look at literally every other verb, they have past and non-part forms. With the non-past form having present tense meaning then the future meaning is is just być + infinitive. I walked - (ja) chodziłe/am I'm walking - (ja) chodzę I will be walking - (ja) będę chodzić

[@vytah]

@@modmaker7617 być+infinitive OR być+L-participle: będę chodził. This is a unique construction in the entire language. In fact, some verbs cannot use the infinitive to form the future tense and have to use the L-participle.

[@modmaker7617]

​@@vytah chodził is just chodziłe/am without the -e/am.

[@michelfug]

This discussion got tense

[@grapefruitsc5478]

To address some of the comments made in this video, I think it may be instructive to look at the French language, specifically the most commonly used form of the French past, or "passé composé". Hopefully we can agree that this is a form of "past tense" (the original video cites it as such), though you can take it up with the Académie if you insist that only the passé simple and imperfect are valid. To summarize the arguments in the video: 1) The English future appears distinct from other tenses. The French "passé composé" also stands out here - "passé composé" uses a conjugated helping verb and a participle rather than a unique conjugated ending as in the present, future, or past imperfect. You can make the argument that helping verbs and participles also appear in French present perfect and the like, but then the English future also isn't very distinct from other "tenses" as constructions like "will verb" or "going to verb" aren't too different from conditional "should verb" or "can verb" or the other examples listed in this video. 2) Constructions English uses for future tense don't always refer to the future. French "passé composé" generally conjugates the verbs "avoir" or "être" along with the participle when constructing the past. That said, as noted before, "être" with a participle is also be used for present perfect. So, "je suis allé" means "I have gone" in the past while "je suis fatigué" means "I am tired" right now. 3) The English future isn't needed to talk about the past. Neither is "passé composé" in French! And I'm not even talking about using the "passé simple" - a construction like "venir de" can easily refer to recent past events using only present tense conjugations! 4) The English future uses a bunch of seemingly random constructions. French will usually use two different verbs ("avoir" and "être") but can express numerous different past aspects by conjugating them either in the present, past imperfect, or even the subjunctive. And this doesn't even take into account various other constructions like "avoir dû faire" or "should have done" which conjugate the subordinate part in the "passé composé" but leave the main verb in the infinitive. All of this is NOT to say that English has a future tense. That is for linguists to decide what definition those words mean and whether English meets said definition. However, I'm afraid the arguments made in this video are insufficient to define English as missing a future tense unless we also agree that French "passé composé" is not part of a French past tense. I'm fine with this, as it furthers my theory that French is Latin as spoken by Germans, but French and the Romance languages were given as ur-examples of what a tense is in the original video. In any event, none of this discussion invalidates any informal analysis, here or otherwise, that uses terminology loosely to assist understanding of one language through comparison with another. tl;dr: English is a confusing mess of Germanic and French and other influences, each of which carries its own random exceptions and weird "tense-like" constructions. We're doing our best.

[@bastientheriault7301]

"Je suis fatigué" isn't passé composé though. It's présent + adjective. Sure there is the verb fatiguer but the passé composé od that verb is J'ai fatigué (I have tired something). We can also take Se fatiguer (to get tired) but the passé composé is Je me suis fatigué (I have gotten myself tired) I guess you could also think of Être fatigué as it's own thing. But then "Je suis fatigué" would be the présent of that verb Edit: I guess a more appropriate verb to show that distinction yoi were showing is probably Mourir. "Il est mort" can either mean "he has died" or "he is dead". But even then one is passé composé and the other is présent+ adjective

[@agaed7676]

Good video, I don't like it, but it's a damn good video

[@enterchannelname8981]

Present retrospective is so much better than present perfect

[@ОнуфрийБиборабский-Бибобабский]

If so-called present tense is actually non-past tense, why sentences like "I visit you tomorrow" or "I study tomorrow", are ungrammatical as far as I know? I'm not a native English speaker.

[@littlebitmoreksp]

as a native English speaker, these are (in some contexts) perfectly grammatically correct from my perspective, though perhaps not quite "formal" and may be discouraged in an academic setting

[@vatsalj7535]

​​@@littlebitmorekspis this a good example? " You keep your preparations ready and I pay you a visit tomorrow"

[@alexandriatempest]

The most divisive thing yet... here's to a hundred more divisive things!

[@PeridotFacet-FLCut-XG-og1xx]

I think you should have brought up agreement. Take an incomplete sentence like "Now I ... (to eat)" "Tomorrow I ... (to eat)" and your task is to list all forms of the verb "to eat" that you can use to make that sentence grammatically correct. "eat" "shall eat" "will eat" "am eating" "will have eaten" etc. The sentences might have slightly different meanings (different aspects and moods), but all of them can be used with non-past adverbs, and voila you have your non-past tense.

[@DimKen]

2:33 but in french it's written : tu ne tueras point future tense without modal verb, so shall/will = future tense

[@KitsuneBleu]

As a non-linguist with absolutely no training in the field, I'm going to agree with you.

[@fghsgh]

I wonder how Slavic languages fit into this. In (most) Slavic languages (that i know of), each verb has an inherent property: either it is perfective, or imperfective. Imperfective verbs have a past and a present (and an analytic future). Perfective verbs have a past and a future (and no present at all, in fact, the future tense uses the same endings as the present tense in imperfective verbs). The only exception to this is "to be" which has both a present and a future (the future tense is used in the construction of the imperfective analytic future, even) (and it is an imperfective verb). Also, the past tense uses an l-participle which inflects by gender and number but not by person (they're 3rd person by default, and add the present form of "to be" for 1st and 2nd, like, uh, bol[a] som/bol[a] si/bol[a]/boli sme/boli ste/boli). So it's analytic in 1st & 2nd person but not in 3rd? And the l-participle isn't used in any other context so it's not like you can interpret it like some more complex construction like "have+past participle" in English. (also, lolling at you completely brushing aside the controversy with the gender videos)

[@cemreomerayna463]

The primary grammatical use of "will" is to build future tense, period. "Will acts like modal verbs." Of course, because it was a modal verb until its use shifted. The term "modal verb" is used to refer to helper verbs in Germanic languages that convey the mood of the action. The verb "will" does not mark any modality anymore, but the time of an action; hence not a modal verb. "'A fox will hunt rabbits' is not used for future reference" I am not really sure about that. It is a quite clear reference to the animal's habit that will persist. Same with the second example "My shoes won't fit", my feet has grown to a point that it won't fit my shoes anymore, using future construction for referring to the change of state. Both sentences convey a meaning apart from future reference, but still relying on it. "The construction 'to be going to ' marks prospective aspect" %100 agree with you on this. It contrasts with the use of "to have" with participle in perfective aspect. "You use present for future" only in narrow contexts where you talk about your plans and schedules. You can replace all the constructions you gave as an example for this with "going to" or "will". Can you do the opposite? To make it more clear; none of the given examples show that the primary grammatical task of "will" is not referring to an action in future. It is not even like German where the present construction is actually used for future in some capacity. Giving another context; I do speak a language with Past/Non-Past distinction. In Zaza, we have a relatively recent periphrastic constructuon to mark future, but some dialects (including mine) still lack it. We do not have any grammatical way to mark a present sentence from a future one. The sentence "Ez şono" can be both present (I am going) and future (I will go), the only way to clarify is to specify the time.

[@SirEnwardEffsler]

I came to a similar conclusion that time I attempted to create my own Germanic language. I decided that I needed a "future participle" of "te-" the way that German uses "ge-" as a past participle but in conjugation with "be" instead of "have". Creating an actual simple future tense was more work than I was willing to do at the time lol

[@davidroddini1512]

Gee, someone needs to chill. He seems two tense 😂

[@enderb0t]

So is saying "ir a ___" in spanish not future tense?

[@saegerrr]

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the Japanese verbal system and how it expresses (or fails to express) the future tense.

[@bobboberson8297]

It's just past/non-past like english. You can just say like つもり or use volitional conjugations to talk about things you intend to do

[@JakubS]

The use of will in the future tense is different from the use of will as a modal verb

[@clubsandwich559]

i see. it’s useful to make the distinction between “i will eat,” referring to some future point in time where i will be eating and “i will eat,” which contextually indicates that at some future point i will be eating. bold!

[@АклызМелкенды]

@@clubsandwich559 well, "I will eat" when you are going to eat something in the future or "I will eat" as in expressing your will to do something even if there are forces that will try to stop your wrongdoings, but they will fail (according to you, at least)

[@Tasorius]

@@clubsandwich559 You clearly did not see. "Will" can be used as both a modal and temporal verb.

[@parabolaaaaa4919]

english does have a future tenses its just neurodivergent

[@crbgo9854]

I will to have agreed with you

[@otistically]

I thought that the Tolkien video was gonna be the most controversial due to you know... Twitter being petty? I was shocked to know that the "No Future Tense" video was the most controversial to you.

[@ling.academy]

0:48 -- you can point at a table and call it a "chair" -- The Swiss author Peter Bichsel wrote a wonderful story just about that: EIN TISCH IST EIN TISCH. Published in Peter Bichsel, Kindergeschichten. Definitely worth reading!

[@jopeteus]

People believe English has a "future tense" because that's what is taught in schools. When teaching languages to children you have to simplify the explanations because most children wouldn't understand the difference between aspect and tense. And it's not even necessary for them to learn that difference to learn English.

[@masscreationbroadcasts]

Of course it doesn't. It makes "future tenses" only through use of auxiliary verbs. Tenses require the verb of the predicate to change in relation to time.

[@lit_kzh]

love the comment of the month lmao

[@redrusski7180]

So does "future proche" in french also not count as a "future tense"?

[@bahaman19901]

yeah it's present tense

[@snomcultist189]

What’s you’re opinion on future perfect continuous?

[@marshall45wdm17]

imma call my gf husband man

[@Maria_Ikea]

we winning the argument in english class w/ this one 🔥🔥

[@Yipper64]

I like how a video on gender and the most controversial thing is if "future tense" is a thing. And btw your explanation makes a ton of sense.

[@rateeightx]

4:45 If memory serves you can do the same thing in Italian as well though, Using the simple present to refer to an action in the future, And Italian _does_ have a distinct inflectional future tense, so I don't feel this is a terribly good argument. Interestingly, you could theoretically argue Italian has no Simple Past on a similar basis to what you're doing for English here, Aside from the Passato Storico which isn't much used in colloquial speach, as what's usually used is the "Passato Prossimo", which is analogous to (And, in addition to acting as simple past, used for the same purposes as) the English Perfect. "Ho giocato" = "I have played", "Giocavo" = "I was playing", theoretically "Giocai" = "I played", but you wouldn't usually hear that (At least not in the North, from what I've heard it's more common in the south.), Ergo colloquial northern Italian lacks a simple past. It would perhaps be more fun to try and argue that Welsh lacks a present tense, but I don't feel like that, so y'all can do it yourselves or simply imagine me doing it, Your choice.

[@melvynhunt480]

I've often thought that English verb constructions concerning time must be unusually difficult for learners of English. I appreciate your discussion of the topic. But other languages I know seem not to embrace the future tense fully. The tense that you showed for French isn't used that much to express a future sense (it's more common than after the equivalent of "when" or a negative, and the present tense or the auxiliary corresponding to "go" otherwise tends to replace it). The German future "tense" (which you might also prefer to call a modal - werden = to become) also seems to be replaced quite often by the present when the sense is the future, but my German is getting a bit rusty, so others will be better informed about German.

[@AdrianoZonta]

your explanation of perfective/prospective aspects of verbs was really helpful. I’ve always struggled with the concept but you made it a lot clearer.

[@emptyset1312]

Ultimately I don't find your arguments about "will" to be 100% convincing. I think you are certainly correct that "will" fits into the pattern of all of the other modal verbs, but unless I've misunderstood you, it seems like your argument relies on the false dichotomy that it can either fit the pattern or the modal verbs, or function as a tense. But why can't it do both? Couldn't one argue that English simply has a modal future tense? For sake of argument, imagine a hypothetical language where time is ONLY indicated by modal verbs (or an equivalent pattern). Would the analysis of most linguists be that this language has no tense? Or would they say that modal verbs indicate tense in this language? If tense CAN be indicated in this way, and tense doesn't need to be indicated in the same way for every tense in a language, then the "will" construction can count as a tense. I also don't necessarily agree with your analysis about other ways "will" is used. It's not clear to me that "A fox will hunt rabbits" is best described as meaning "Foxes regularly/naturally/willingly hunt rabbits" - I would instead put forward a description that goes something like, "Should you encounter a fox, you can expect that in the future, it is likely to hunt rabbits". In other words, it's describing the future behavior of an archetypal fox, not the ongoing behavior of foxes in general. So the future is indeed being described here. The "my shoe won't fit" argument doesn't do it for me either. You say that this case describes "possibility", and I agree - but a common way to understand "things that are possible" is as "things which could happen in the future". Thus, it seems to me that the future is still being described here, even if in a figurative or indirect way. To use another example, imagine two people are faced with some problem; one person proposes a solution, and the other replies by saying "that won't work" - in this case, I think it's clear they're trying to convey "if we did that in the future, it wouldn't work". I don't think it's a significant leap to move from something like "that won't work" to something like "my shoe won't fit", since the idea of a hypothetical and the idea of a prediction about the future are closely linked. I suppose one counterargument to my line of reasoning would be that the sense of "will" as indicating the future came later, and that its meaning as a modal verb indicating intention (or something like that) came first, and thus it's backwards to suggest that all uses of "will" are actually abstractly or figuratively invoking the future. I suppose a response to that would be to ask how English speakers in general conceptualize "will" - and I think a case could be made that English speakers primarily understand "will" as referring to the future.

[@janicechristiedenton0451]

I think there's one argument that everybody can agree on, if nothing else. English is a mess of a language and always will be. See for example: Debates over its tenses. (I'm learning Arabic at the moment, and its has its own parts that are as hard, and the more I go outside of Indo-European languages... the more I sympathize with ESL students.)