Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with conjugation

If only Bescherelle was a program

djgh — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:06:48 -0800

Verb conjugation tester for OSX? Are there any verb conjugation testers for OSX, whereby the question is either "fill in all the blanks to this verb table" or "2nd person plural of verb x" (etc.)?

I've tried repurposing flashcard programs for this, but having to have one card per conjugation (i.e. a card for 1st person singular, card for 2nd person singular etc. of the same verb) is really wearing and not the way I want to be able to do this.

I've got French Verb Games, but it's not doing what I want it to do - the question shows an entire verb table with one blank (allowing me to figure out the answer rather then know it), and the tests include hundreds of verbs I don't know rather than testing me on what I do know.

I would therefore prefer to input the verb tables myself.

I'm more than happy to accept a non-GUI Ruby, Python etc. script for this.

Is English abnormal?

jak68 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:53:42 -0800

language-philes -- Isnt English weird for not having conjugated verbs? Even its closest relatives - german and the romance languages - have conjugated verbs. Please to explain? Most other indo-european languages (like Indian languages, and of course latin etc as well) have conjugated verbs too.
Conjugated verbs seems the norm in the linguistic, cultural, and ethnic environment in which English developed.

So how did it so uniquely escape conjugated verbs, within this european cultural and indo-european linguistic environment?

(I know there are very minor conjugations in English, like "I run" vs "he runs"; I'm talking obviously about the 6 or more types of conjugations (plus tense-conjugations) that all these other languages have...)

I'm just curious. Thanks!

Shew?

ITheCosmos — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:19:39 -0800

In Anscombe's translation of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, why does he use "shew" instead of "show"? I understand that "shew" is an archaic version of "show", but this book was published in 1968. What's the desired effect? Sure is annoying.