Tense?

Oh no, you think another story about how to overcome the anxiety of staying home all the time, but fear not, it is and it isn’t. I am certainly not a psychologist and apart from some regular yoga I follow online, I am not doing anything else to relieve some tension.

So why did I choose the title, well, because compared to learning Italian, English grammar seems so simple and straightforward. I questioned myself why is speaking English such a hurdle for some. I have been thinking about it for quite some time. There is a lot of uncertainty build into the language. In Italian with a lot of repetition, you should be able, when applying the rules of grammar, to produce some understandable speech from initial “utterances”.

Of course pronunciation, the origin of the language and word order etc. play an extensive role in varying both languages. By no means, I underestimate the difficulty of the beautiful language that Italian is, but I believe English looks easier at first glance. English becomes more complicated by the phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, “same word-different meaning”, “same sound-different meaning”. To me, Italian provides different words for almost similar meanings, whilst in English, we take the same word and use it in a different context. So, take tense for example, used as a noun and a verb.

If we are talking about verbs everybody knows that we are referring to present tense and the past tense and yes there is a future in English, but it not a standalone tense. We require auxiliary verbs to produce a “future form”.

We can feel tense, which means we are a bit nervous.

You are tensed up so much that listening to your own voice in a different language, stops you from speaking.

During exercise, you tense your muscles.

To get tense will not help you to do well at your exam.

So when you grasp the basics in English, over time you will be able to elevate the language to a good C-level, whilst I find that in Italian you will get to a good level of practical use of the language. Elevating it further, due to its complexity of this poetic language, is something many of us only can aspire to.

They say "no pain, no gain", however I am adamant to ease the journey. Don't hesitate and start learning English by trying out some exercises I uploaded. Watch this space. https://www.englishafirenze.com/file-share/08be3ac1-d214-4cfd-8fa1-7b765a225a97 Marleen @www.englishafirenze.com #English #Englishteacher

Picture: iki.fi/markus.koljonen