# Do you think english tenses should have a precise logic use?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 1, 2015, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186 "2015-10-01T23:09:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mr\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_wolf)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2015, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/1 "2015-10-01T23:09:43Z")
…or should it just flow with the popularity of the times?
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2015, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/2 "2015-10-01T23:19:04Z")
Since the OP is asking for opinions, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/3 "2015-10-01T23:52:40Z")
If English is supposed to follow precise logical rules, what happens when people on the street ignore the prescribed rules, and speak in vernacular? Is there some sort of punishment imagined? Social stigma? If there’s a social stigma to not speaking in a particular way, isn’t that flowing with the popularity of the times? Because the social stigma won’t come from not following precise logical rules, it will come from not following the rules of whatever prestige dialect is dominant.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/4 "2015-10-02T00:00:32Z")
If people were really really strict about grammar, to the point of being robotic about it, we would respond to any ungrammatical sequence of words with something like:
_You have made a grammatical error. Your statement could not be parsed._
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/5 "2015-10-02T00:14:17Z")
And we would all say “affirmative” a lot.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/6 "2015-10-02T00:31:18Z")
As is said many times, language is not logic.
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### Author:  [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/7 "2015-10-02T00:34:50Z")
It would be nice if the English language didn’t evolve and if everybody always used unchanging rules of grammar, but I don’t see any real point in losing too much sleep over common [del]mistakes[/del] variations. Since it is impossible to enforce the rules rigidly, I think English grammar and spelling should be **slow** to change.
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### Author:  [@mr\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_wolf)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/8 "2015-10-02T01:31:47Z")
The real point might be that we use language to construct our vision of the world and to communicate that vision to others.
If one implies that being robotic and logic with the grammar is being robotic and stiff with the message, one might imagine if computers worked the same way. Some garbled pixels might be stylish and surprising for some, but the original picture is lost, communication suffers, regionalisms arise (what I see is not what you, my countrymen, see).
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### Author:  [@mr\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_wolf)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/9 "2015-10-02T01:43:09Z")
> [@Lemur866](#):
>
> If English is supposed to follow precise logical rules, what happens when people on the street ignore the prescribed rules, and speak in vernacular? Is there some sort of punishment imagined? Social stigma? If there’s a social stigma to not speaking in a particular way, isn’t that flowing with the popularity of the times? Because the social stigma won’t come from not following precise logical rules, it will come from not following the rules of whatever prestige dialect is dominant.
Yes.
Yes again.
I guess so.
Sooo… should it or not?
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### Author:  [@mr\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_wolf)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/10 "2015-10-02T01:47:30Z")
> [@suranyi](#):
>
> As is said many times, language is not logic.
Rubbish. Try to speak to a close friend with sentences with no logic and please report back what happened.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/11 "2015-10-02T18:23:13Z")
> [@mr\_wolf](#):
>
> Rubbish. Try to speak to a close friend with sentences with no logic and please report back what happened.
By that, I mean, for example, there’s no logical reason the past tense of “reach” is “reached”, but the past tense of “teach” is “taught”. Or, to take a famous example, from its components the word “anti-Semitism” would logically seem to mean hatred of all Semites, which would include Arabs. But actually it simply means hatred of Jews.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-english-tenses-should-have-a-precise-logic-use/733186/12 "2015-10-02T18:42:25Z")
To begin with English has only two tenses: the past, which is perfective and the so-called present which is timeless. Everything else is done with auxiliaries which color the meaning. I will… and I am going to… both express futurity but with slightly different shades. It is meaningless (really an attempt to force English into a Latin mold) to call one the future and the other what? The compound past, despite calling it the perfect is actually imperfective in meaning. And I think nearly all native speakers of English use these tenses correctly. There is also a nearly moribund subjunctive. Although people who use it generally use it correctly, it is not “illogical” not to use it. The OP cannot be answered because its premises are flawed.