English Has No Future (Tense)

One learns much from action. As a composer, I am a staunch believer that composing goes hand in hand with a firm comprehension of music theory. It simply is not enough to read about harmony, rhythm, melody, and timbre; these things must be meddled with and heard. Same with poetry, prose, on and on: application is the seal of inculcation. 

What about language? I'm not talking about any specific language, like Finnish or some bushman clicking language, but language itself, linguistics. Like music, should one compose in language to grasp linguistic theory?

At the start of this year, I began creating my own language as a hobby. Knowing verbs were perhaps the most essential aspect of language, I went to work there first. I laid out some rules and what not, dealt with time, how to conjugate. Then came time to deal with the subjunctive mood, which I wanted to make essential. I was using my Wheelock's Latin book as resource to help me deal with this in an orderly fashion. However, the book said that there were some subjunctive constructions it didn't deal with. Intrigued, I googled the subjunctive mood. What I discovered revealed my immense naivete in dealing with this.

Basically, the way we are taught language in school is incredibly basic. I am so overwhelmed with all that linguistics involves that I can't even begin to list the things I learned. Perhaps I'll start with the title of this post. In the everyday use and sense of language, there is of course a future "tense" in English. However, technically speaking, for there to be a tense, the verb itself has to be modified (conjugated) to indicate temporality. English has no future conjugation of verbs in the way, say, Latin does (for first and second conjugation verbs, you add "-bi-" to indicate the future). Our language has two ways that I know of to indicate the future. The modals "will" and "shall" are used. There is a particular charm to this. With a verb in future tense, the action is taking place in the future, but with English modals, there is promise for the action to occur. Another way is through adverbs. If take a present tense word, like "run," and combine it with a future time, like "tomorrow," I have stated a future occurrence ("I run tomorrow.") There are many ways to do this.

I humbly reworked my entire method of creating my language. After much work, I formulated the beginnings of a grammar, and this past week I began creating words. First, however, here is the alphabet, with  IPA  and English equivalents for sound:

a, [æ] "trap"  á, [a] "aisle"   à, [ɑ] "awe"
e, [ɛ] "bet"   é, [e] "baiser" (French)   ee, [i] "peach"
i, [ɪ] "hit"  
o, [o] "Oh!"   oo, [u] "who"
u, [œ] "but"   ú, [ʊ] "book"   ü, [y] "tschüß" (German)
ae, [aɪ] "right"   au, [a͜ʊ] "now"
öe, [ø͜ɪ] no equivalents   oe, [ɔ͜ɪ] "boy"
aeú, [aɪʊ], "fire"
üáú, [y͜aʊ] no equivalents
b, j, r (rolled), g, ph (aspirate "p") c (English "ch"), d, k, v, y, tH (hard "th"), z, t, zh (as in "garage"), th, m, ts, ny, w, s, n, kh (German "ch"), hw, sh, l, h

All in all, some 44 different sounds. I worked it out so that each sound had some meaning/purpose, mostly to help me construct the language.

Some other tidbits: there seems to be 168 different ways to conjugate a verb (so many moods). Tense and aspect (tense answers "time when," aspect answers "time how") are indicated through affixes appended to nouns and pronouns. Prepositions are dependent upon case and placement of prepositions. Now for some words:

hwábüáú: "to be"
tsübüáú: "to have"
voebüáú: "to call, call for"
oohoe: "name"
gá: "time"

I'll be blogging more about this as I progress.

Now for a thing of beauty:

Walther's "Prize Song" from Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, one of my favorite operas. Walther, wanting to marry Elizabeth, has to win the Mastersinger's competition. Working with Hans Sachs, perhaps the greatest Mastersinger, he works out his revolutionary song while still attempting to use the best of tradition.