I go, you go, he she it goes

Remember when I asked how hot it needs to be to fry an egg on the pavement? Forget frying an egg, my brain is fried! And not from the heat (although I guess that could be part of the problem).

My language teacher is returning to her home country for the summer. Upon seeing how quickly I learn, she decided to barrell through verb tenses, and leave me to absorb it all once she left. From when I'd started language two months ago until recently, we'd moved at this turle pace...

How to write three letters. How to write three more letters. Oh, you get that? Here's 25 more letters. How to say I, you, he, she, it, we, yall, them. (Okay, so she didn't use the word 'yall.' But really, it is one of the most useful words in English when learning another language for when speaking of you plural. 'Yall' just sounds so much more pleasant and friendly than 'you plural.')

Then, after WEEKS, I finally learned my first verb tense: simple past. I went, you went, he she it went. Why did I learn simple past FIRST? Because it is the most regular form in this language, and everything seems to build from this form. So I have constantly been walking around making simple sentences about what I did yesterday, last week, etc.

For several more weeks I learned how to evolve my simple past tense sentence into a more complex one.

"I went."
"Yesterday I went."
"Yesterday to your house I went."
"Yesterday to your house new I went."
"Yesterday to your house new I didn't go."

I began to wonder if I was ever going to get to live in the present instead of in a memory. WELL! Last week, she hit it to me. I have learned...

"I went."
"I have gone."
"I had gone."
"I will go."

Just when I thought she couldn't move any faster through the verbs, I sat down at the desk today, and learned TWO more verb tenses.

"I go." (HOORAY for the simple present!)
"Go!" (and "don't go," because the negative is different than the positive).

The simple present is supposed to be a really complicated form, because it's based on root words...so one must know the root and then the formula of how to conjugate it...and then the completely different word they say in pronunciation. (Because it's an oral language, there is a formal way to write everything, and a completely different way to say everything. ARG.) Having memorized all the irregular verbs in Portuguese, and those silly roots in Greek, I'm hoping I can handle memorizing these roots.

But so it goes...