howtobeterrell:

How come our language (African American language)has 5 present tenses?

Where they do that at?

Does anyone know where that came from?

Just, I was reading up about different English dialects the other day and one of them was AAVE*. The other was Irish English, which can be quite odd at times. One of the most obvious quirks is that, at least in certain parts, people won’t answer a question with a simple yes or no, they’ll repeat the verb in either the positive or the negative. “Are you going home?” “I am/I am not”, “do you like sweets?” “I do/I don’t”.

I’d never really thought about this before, largely because it had been shamed out of me as a child for sounding common, but it’s a direct translation from Irish**. In fact virtually all our grammatical quirks are inherited from Irish. Kind of an interesting read on Wikipedia if you’re into that sort of thing.

Just, 5 present tenses doesn’t seem like a thing a person would develop just for shits and giggles, that sounds like a hold over from another language and it just … seems like an interesting topic is all.

* Still haven’t found a straight answer on what the correct term is.

** Yeah … there was a lot of that in my house, and in many of my friends houses too, if their accents are anything to go by.