
Anybody have to do a reread of that sentence?
I love playing with language, something I eluded to way back in Greetings from the Mothership. Most western trained people, writing or speaking about a past event, will write or say "There I was, ..." but I am writing in the present (I'm in the airport coffee shop as I type this) about something that will have occurred in the past ("will have"? That's a future past construction) when I post this in the future (Monday, 28 Apr 08. Today is Friday, 25 Apr 08).
Other languages, especially ancient languages and several long forgotten tongues, can handle this kind of transtemporality easily. Modern English has vestiges of this ability in its rich (and mostly borrowed) history of verb tenses. Most people (if pressed) can remember the Past, Present and Future tenses; I was, I am, I will be. We've mostly lost our Germanic modal tenses, our Francian pluperfect tenses, our Latin, Gaelic, Norwegian and have long forgotten our Koenic rich tenses (126 different verb tenses, if I remember correctly).
(more to follow)
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