Why Grammar Jargon is a Problem

About Tenses and Time Warps

Douglas Adams, in chapter 15 of his inimitable?The Restaurant at the end of the Universe, has the following to offer on the intricacies of time travel and verb tenses.

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. (…)

The main problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult on this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

Why is grammar jargon a problem? It feels like outer space to learn ers who just want to master English. Earthling learners of the English language don't need timewarp-like tenses.

What do they need? A clear handle on the indispensable basics. Which are those, you might ask? Word order and verb-form patterns they can understand. Grammar should help, not hinder.

The original post is no more, but parts of it have surfaced in other GrammarBob posts - check it out!