#and most native speakers instinctively know when you can use shall (although most people don't) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

quil12 · 1 year ago

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I just spent so fucking long trying to figure out a sentence and I hate English grammar lmao

Like the sentence was: The things that [Name] was going to bring up [...]

And I was trying to figure out between 'was' and 'were' (I'm 99% sure it's 'was' though) and it just confused me so bad. Cause it would be 'the things were', but it's '[Name/He] was' because it's like plural vs singular grammar rules. The subject of the sentence is 'the things' and so, in my head, that should determine the conjugation of the verb, but in actuality, the relative clause changes it to agree with that (I think because that's technically the full subject) and it's just so confusing

#moral of the story is that verb conjugation is horrid #even in your native language #for context #i have a degree in linguistics and had to take multiple college level courses discussing grammar in depth #and the more i learned the more i hated it #its actually really interesting though #relative clauses just fuck things up though lmao #ive learned some really cool grammar facts though because of it #and its fascinating #like i think most people know the word 'hither'#but i dont think most people know the other two words that go with it #those being 'thither' and 'whither'#respectively they mean 'to here' 'to there' and 'to where'#and i think its really interesting how we decided to get rid of perfectly good words only to replace them with an article plus a word #like i want to know why #theres also like the difference between shall and will #and most native speakers instinctively know when you can use shall (although most people don't)#but it's actually kind of hard to distinguish #anyway #hate grammar #its also something i find infinitely interesting

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