What are Up with Verbs?
We’re all affected by the current coronavirus pandemic – in some way or another. And while I have a million things I could say about the pandemic, politics, masks, social distancing, and all the craziness that has gripped our country, I’d rather divert your attention to something a little less dire — and a whole lot less controversial. It’s something we can all agree on – verbs is for the birds. They is too finicky – too fussy – too uptight. And I has never much cared for verbs. I’m an adjective kind of guy.
This morning I came across a quote from one of my favorite authors, Lewis Carroll. I don’t have many favorite authors, but Lewis Carroll is one of them because of his wonderful word play. You’re probably thinking, “What quote?” aren’t you? I will get to that after I submit to you my reasons for my abject hatred of verbs.
Verbs are nasty things. They has a nasty, vile temper. They is always angry and disagreeable and they has to agree or they doesn’t work. What kind of nonsense is that? You can’t say “You done good.” Done do not agree with “you” or “good” – I’m confused about which, but nonetheless, the verb don’t agree. Most verbs doesn’t agree naturally, they needs to be coddled. Why are verbs so disagreeable? Because, they are nasty, arrogant, things, that’s why. I really hates verbs. I can tolerate adverbs, barely.
Grammarians and English teachers has saddled us poor, confused goombas with all sorts of rules for verbs and they does this just to confuse us. If verbs wasn’t so disagreeable by nature, we wouldn’t need English teachers or grammarians.
So, let’s see: We has transitive and intransitive verbs. We has passive and active verbs. Verbs are so uptight they is tense. Not just tense, their tenseness have levels. A good back rub won’t help a verb relax. They has all sorts of tense levels – past, perfect, future, past-perfect, future-perfect, and so on. When I’m tense, I’m just plain perfectly tense. Verbs? Not so much. They are so arrogant they has different levels of tenseness.
It was bad enough that verbs was nasty, arrogant, and touchy when I were in school, but now it’s even worse. I just looked up verbs by googling (that’s a new verb) verbs. Now I see they has added a whole new category of tenseness – past perfect continuous tense, present perfect continuous tense, future perfect continuous tense – what’s with all this verb tenseness? I’d like to give every verb I’ve ever met a couple of Ativan tablets and have them tell me what kind of tense they feel. I bet they’d be as relaxed and fun-loving my old jolly adjectives.
Verbs stinks, to be blunt. I doesn’t likes them. In fact I hates them. I hates to use the word “hate” because it’s a verb – and I do know that the second and third “hate” in this sentence is not verbs. Ha! I’m not as dumb as you think, huh?
You’d think they’d call people who love verbs “verbose” but you can’t because “verbose” is an adjective that doesn’t mean “one who loves verbs”.
I bet societies who use a lot of verbs has a higher percentage of people with RLS – Restless Leg Syndrome. I know that whenever I encounters a writer who use lots of verbs my legs twitch a lot. I bet societies who uses tons of verbs also have a lot of children with learning disorders. Verbs makes my brain want to shut down. Who wants to hear their English teacher drone on about past perfect continuous tense and verb agreements? Why doesn’t verbs just want to get along? Why doesn’t they wants to agree naturally? Because they is bellicose by nature, that’s why! They is cranky, contentious, grumpy curmudgeons left over from Olde English.
English teachers loves verbs because they can fill up a lot of class time discussing the cantankerous nature of disagreeable verbs.
I really does hates verbs. They makes me think too hard and gives me too many headaches. I says let’s gets rid verbs and cleans up the English language once and for all.
Oh! I almost forget. You wants to know who gots me started on all this? Lewis Carroll, that’s who!
“They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs, they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them!” ( Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”.)
When “adulting” became a recognized verb, I threw up my hands and thought, “I’m in the Twilight Zone and can’t find the door out!”
I have to say I could not read your rant without changing the incorrect verbs to their proper form. When I was in school, we learned past, present and future tenses. Period. Verbs don’t bug me at all but when someone is telling me something and they keep adding “you know” to their story I wonder why they are telling me at all if they think I already know.