Time traveler's grammar

Douglas Adams wrote in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the biggest problem with time travel was the grammar. He was right.

However, the solution presented in that superb book is obviously a joke as it takes the matter to its utmost complication. In reality, more straightforward —or, more correctly, loopforward— less awkward and grammatically sensible solutions exist, albeit not as funny and a bit too academically dry…

So. There are two grammatically paradoxical scenarios:

• The traveller will do an action in the past.
• The traveller has done an action in the future.

These two sentence show that the whole time travel grammar business is not really that much of a problem. After all, when letters are written the tenses used refer to those of the writer and not of the future reader, e.g. "by the time you will read this, I will have fled to Antarctica to join a nunnery" and not "as you read this now, I have already fled to Antarctica". Grumble grumble.

In essence, adding in the past or in the future, which act as temporal delimitators actually make the sentence sound. Curiously, the words past, present and future are actually fossils of Latin participles, namely past is from passatus, the past participle of passare (to pass), present is from præsens, the present participle of præesse (to preside), while future is from futurus, the future participle of esse (to be). This means that the two time-travel examples do have a slight (hidden) verbal muddle —and verbal muddle is what I want.

But can the muddledom be increased without breaking regular grammatical structure?

Germanic languages ‚a family which includes English, have no dedicated future tense. To wit, a word ending to make the tense (cf. "I will receive" with "je recevrai"). This gives us "the traveller will did/had done an action" or simply "the traveller will done an action", which possess the time travelling awkwardness I am after all.

Although it is a bit of silly as the construct formed by a modal verb plus past participle, simple past or past perfect is wrong. This is unavoidable as will plus present perfect is a future perfect ("the traveller will have done an action").

A further loophole is with would. Will is a modal verb that has a present indicative form (will) and a præterite (=past) subjunctive (would) and in Old English willan was a bog-standard verb (meaning to will/intend). Therefore, "the traveller would/willed do an action" should fit the bill of an action to be done in the past, but it just sounds like a conditional clause.

An alternative would be to introduce a present perfect of will: "the travelled has would/willed do/done/doing an action", which is relatively nicer.

After all that work, there is the problem that the two forms could work either way round.

• the traveller will had done an action
• the travelled has would do an action

Okay, the will verb was a good jail-breaker, what happens if it was not used and the time travelling grammar was to be tried on a Romance language?

In that case participles might do the trick, albeit badly. There are three issues, though, that make it a mess.

Firstly, the present participle (e.g. "the eating dog") is active and progressive while the past (e.g. "the eaten dog") is passive and perfect, but the inverse constructs could be made ("the has-eaten dog" and "the being eaten dog"). Parenthetically, Greek grammar has a much better fix, but Greek grammar has little to do with English, so it will have to do.

Secondly, Latin (and Greek) had a future participle but French and English do not, so it needs to be introduced. The Latin (first conjugation) suffix for the future participle is -aturus, which could be anglicised to -ature (/-eɪtʃər/ like nature) —okay, the -at- part is the same as -ed, but that is hair-splitting. So "the dog that will have eaten" could be "eatature (or eatenure) dog".

Lastly, decoupling tense of the participle from the verb and coupling the verb-y bit with the time-frame of the traveller and the participle with the time-frame of the action would allow:

• The traveller will (had) done an anction (action done in the past that the traveller will do).
• The traveller had doature an action (action doature that has not yet occurred that the traveller has done)

The latter is hideously horrible and doature sounds like douche. Which I think means that time travelling is for douchebags as is writing drivel about its grammar. I am a double douchebag and will stop here.

My experience with Anglish

English is an unusual language due its hybrid nature, but what would it be if it were not?

Before 1066, the Angles and the Saxons spoke Old English, a Germanic language like German and Swedish.
Old English contained only a handful of words that where of Latin origin, mainly church-related. In the north of England, specifically in Danelaw, the viking occupied land, several Old Norse words (the language that evolved into Swedish) were seeping into the vocabulary. However, when the Normans conquered England in 1066 (by cheating in true french style) Old French was the official language and a multitude of words entered the vocabulary to the point that 1/3 of English words nowadays are of Old French origin. But this was not the only hybridization event: several centuries later, the usage of Latin and Greek words was seen as sophisticated resulting in another inflow of words that did not descend from Old English. Today, Greek and Latin words are seen as poncy, so the inflow has changed to a more cosmopolitan medley of sources.

This raises the question of what would English sound like if it lacked this hybrid nature and this is were the Anglish Moot comes in. The Anglish Moot is an online community that experiments with this concept by writing in "Anglish". It is a curious language that sounds like Shakespearian English (early modern English), namely it is clearly English, but with some benighted (obscure) bits. I found it so enthralling I was quickly sucked it.

However, it became slowly shire (clear) that the goalwork (project) is a banefall (disaster). Even the grounder (founder) forlore (abandoned) it years ago having become unbewitched (disenchanted) with it. I lost westumscat (interest, from wæstmsceatt: literally fruit treasure) in it for three frumes (reasons).

Firstly, all the adighters (editors) did their own thing, sometimes pulling in gainstanding (opposing) wardings (directions), without betwixtdoing (interacting) with each other, therefore edframing (reinventing) words or not telling each other of their findings. This offled (resulted) in an utter lack of suchness hold (quality control) and of an bestriding (overarching) underwrap (theme), a flutter (mess) in other words.

Twithly (Secondly), it did not have any rootfast (fixed) standards (okay, I give up) or guidelines: some editors wanted to replace words that entered after 1066, others all non-germanic words regardless of date of entry, while others replaced words with little rational justification. How replacement words were found changed from editor to editor, when a fully equivalent synonym of Old English origin was absent, some editors simply used less specific similar words, others would look for an obsolete synonym and if none existed would revive an Old English words by modernising the spelling and ending, while others would combine two words regardlessly. This last approach is the only way for modern concepts, but different methods were employed even for this, some looked at German or Icelandish equivalents, while others translated the Graeco-latinate word bit by bit.

The main criticism on the internet is that Anglish is a kind of etymological xenophobia. This is actually a misunderstanding as the drive is not to forspill (eradicate) outlandish (foreign) words but to ross (explore) the "what if" frayn (question) of a more Germanic English language. However, after a while all words not of Old English origin started to seem tainted to me, so etymological xenophobia is a side-effect, which is probably worse.

I must, however, say I learnt a lot of interesting things and words, such as elfsheen (ethereally beautiful) and hagship (hag-like ugliness). Unfortunately, I have not yet had the chance to use these words, but I am hopeful...