LET'S SPEAK ENGLISH:
Broadcast Wednesday, December 29, 1937 at 9:00 PM

Third Talk - Verbs

Third Talk - Verbs

II. The use of: Must - a necessity
Ought - a duty
May - a possibility
can - an ability

III. MUST and OUGHT defective verbs

IV. The verb to DISARM defective in practice

V. Correct use of the tenses:
Present
Simple: I hope
Continuous: I am hoping
Perfect: I have hoped

Past:
Simple: I hoped
Continuous: I was hoping
Perfect: I had hoped

VI. The difference between TO SAY and TO TELL
Special use of TO MAKE (an apology, a statement, a speech)...
TO GIVE (an order)
TO DELIVER (an address)

VII. TO RUN down, over, in , out, up and away

VIII.Differnt forms of past participle
SHAVED and SHAVEN
HUNG and HANGED

TRANSCRIPT: THIRD TALK - VERBS

Or let's take the verb to GO. The present tense is I GO. Then the past tense should be I go'ed, But it isn't, it's I WENT. And the perfect isn't I WENTED but I have GONE. What a language!

Some of the English verbs are nice and pleasant - like "eat", "drink" and "be merry"," But we of the Brighter English League are made of sterner stuff. We'll first tackle the hard, unbending verbs - MUST, OUGHT, MAY and CAN.

Must implies necessity. "I MUST go to the dentist" means that my cheek's all swollen; I've terrible toothache and there's no time to lose.

OUGHT expresses a duty but not a necessity. "I OUGHT to go to the dentist" means that I know that, if I don't, I'll suffer for it later. But that usually makes very little difference. I'm just like you are: I don't like dentists and I just don't go.

MAY signifies a mere possibility. "I MAY go today to the dentist" if my tooth's still bad. But, isn't it funny, the nearer one gets to that dentist's chair and that dentist's drill, the less one's tooth aches?

CAN is the weakest of them all. It only means capacity. "I CAN go to the dentist if I want to"; and if I don't want to, well he'll do a little drilling in somebody else's jaw.

But that isn't all. Must and OUGHT are defective verbs and have no past or future tenses. In fact they're so defective that they should be in the Bethlehem mental hospital. They exist only in the present - happy, care-free lunatics. Last year's disturbances, next year's partition mean nothing to them. You can't say "Yesterday I MUSTED" or "Tomorrow I shall OUGHT". You have to borrow a past or future tense from another verb and say "Yesterday I had to" and "Tomorrow I shall be obliged to".

Another verb that seems always to be defective in practice is to DISARM, although it's not defective in the grammar books. In Europe, nowadays, no-one ever says "I DISARM." Its a ways you DISARM or he DISARMS" As a matter of fact, you never hear anyone say "he DISARMS". either. It's always in the future : he will DISARM - if everybody else does first.

One of the members of our Brighter English League wrote and asked to explain the difference between the use of the various English tenses.

Now the main divisions of time are the present, the past and the future. For the moment we'Il leave out the future - it's black enough as it is, isn't it'? Now. in the present there are three tenses - the simple, the continuous and the perfcct: also in the past - the simple, the continuous and the perfect tenses. These six tenses are set out in the written outline of this talks which, if you are a member of the League, you should have before you.

I've taken as an example the verb TO HOPE.

Now a young lady of twenty says "I HOPE to get married". That's the simple present - a general truth that she thinks should be obvious to everybody.

When she's thirty she says "I still AM HOPING to get married". She's not quite so sure about it as she was: in fact, it's beginning to worry me too. In this sentence 'AM HOPING' is the continuous present and refers to something not completed. But she still has hopes.

When she's forty, she whispers to her best friend "I, too, HAVE HOPED to get married". 'HAVE HOPED' is the perfect present, here used for something that has just concluded. It mean's she's realized, poor thing, that she's going to be an old maid.

So much for the three present tenses. Now we come to the three past tenses.

When she's fifty, she tells her grown-up nieces "When I was a girl, I HOPED to get married". Here she's shedding a tear as she refers to something wholly completed. "I HOPED" is the simple past.

When she's sixty, she writes in her memoires, in the continuous past, "About 1880 I WAS HOPING to get married".

While, when she's seventy, her relations say "Poor Aunt Mary! When she was a child she HAD HOPED to get married before her elder sister". That's the past perfect tense and refers to an action which was completed even before another action (her elder sister's marriage) was begun.

Poor Aunt Mary! I'm really very sorry for you. I wanted to let you marry when you were twenty, hut I've got to teach English tenses to all these people. So you were doomed to live a lonely life just for their sakes. How can we compensate you? Will you accept the post of Vice-President of the Brighter English League? You will? Good! That makes us all feel so much better.

Another member of the League wrote and asked me when one used the verb to TELL and when one used the verb to SAY. It's really quite simple. To SAY is generally used when you're quoting a person's actual words. When I went off to the War, my mother SAID "Now, dear, don't go and get your feet wet". But if someone else tells the story, he must say, "His mother TOLD HIM not to get his feet wet" : not "His mother SAID to him not to get his feet wet". So you should only use the verb TO SAY when you're quoting a person's actual words.

The verb to TELL can be used in several ways.

First, the simple way, to TELL a story. Then you can look at your watch an TELL the time. Or rather the watch TELLS you the time. Then you can TELL the truth; or more often something you wish were the truth.

But there are some occasions when the verb to TELL is not used. You MAKE an apology. That is if you're well brought up, as I hope you are. And when you MAKE an apology, it must be clear, and not ambiguous; not like the lawyer who was reprimanded by the Judge and said "Your Honour is right, and I am wrong, as Your Honour usually is". That's not the way to MAKE an apology.

Then you don't TELL a statement. You MAKE a statement, and (if you've got no self-control) you sometimes MAKE a speech. Whatever you do, you don't HOLD a speech, as people say in Palestinian English. To HOLD a speech is obviously translated from the German 'eine Rede HALTEN'. If only people did HOLD their speeches, and not let them go, how much happier we should all be.

But if you TELL a story and MAKE a speech, you GIVE an order. You first MAKE a decision and then GIVE a decision. But although you can GIVE a decision in Palestine, it doesn't meant that anyone will ACCEPT what you GIVE. When I GIVE a decision to someone, and he's just about to leave my room, he usually comes in again with a charming smile and says 'BE CHOL zot. BECHOL ZOT is only two words in Hebrew but in English it means. 'All the same, in spite of what you've said, won't you reconsider the whole thmg and do exactly the opposite?'

Well! I've been using all these different verbs TO SAY, TO TELL, TO MAKE, and TO GIVE for a single act - that of speaking. Now let's turn to the verb TO RUN and see how a single verb can be used for many different acts according to the preposition that follows it.

If you're not feeling very well, you can say you're RUN DOWN. So you take your car and off you go to Beirut for a holiday. But unfortunately, on the way, you RUN OVER a sheep and are promptly RUN IN by a policeman who takes you all the way back to Haifa. A couple of weeks later, the case having been postponed five times in the Magistrate's Court, you start off again but soon find you've RUN OUT of petrol. But you get to Beirut at last and have such a good time at your hotel that you RUN UP a bill which you can't possibly pay and have to RUN AWAY.

That little story just shows the difference between RUN DOWN, RUN OVER, RUN IN, RUN OUT, RUN UP and RUN AWAY.

Most verbs have only one past participle. To BREAK - BROKEN: TO MEND - MENDED. But some verbs have two forms of past participle which are used on different occasions.

For example you can say "I have SHAVED today". But if you talk about a man with no beard or moustache you don't say he's clean-SHAVED but clean-SHAVEN. Now, I'll make a personal confession. I am clean-SHAVEN; I have no beard. But I made a calculation the other day. If all the money I've invested since I left school in razor blades and shaving soap and razors were paid to the Palestine Government, we could build a Palestinian navy almost as large as England's. So it's really rather a pity that I am clean-SHAVEN after all.

Another verb that's got two forms of past participle is TO HANG.

You can say that your coat was HUNG on a hook. But a man sentenced to death is not HUNG but HANGED - sometimes. Do you know the story (It's all right, it isn't gruesome) - do you know the story about the fellow who was a little bit insane and tried to commit suicide? They found him hangmg with a rope - not round his neck - but round his arm. When they asked him why, he said "You see, I tried it round my neck and found I couldn't breathe". So, if you want to commit suicide you must see that you are properly HANGED and not merely HUNG.

That's just one of the little tricks in English that I suppose you've realized have been introduced into the language in order to make it more difficult for students. In this way, the British Government has provided work for thousands of unemployed from Great Britain as teachers of English in foreign countries.

Why! if all English verbs were - regular and all English nouns were neuter, the Brighter English League wouldn't exist and I'd have to be president of something else instead - such as - well - Mexico or the Standard Oil Company.

But so far the Brighter English League is going strong. I'm happy to announce that over 200 members have enrolled even from as far as Baghdad and Aleppo.

In view of their eagerness, the Palestine Broadcasting Service propose to allow me to continue these talks all through the winter on Wednesday evenings at 9 p.m. The next talk will be largely devoted to English idiom. Any listener who wishes to receive the outline of this, and other, talks in advance shou!d send in his or her name and address to the President, the Brighter English League, care of The Palestine Broadcasting Service, Jerusalem. There's no age limit and no fee and you needn't enclose a stamp for my reply.