Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for March 28, 2018

♫ People, People who need dogs, aren’t as lucky as the other people, the people who need people, but they’re more comfortable, the most comfortable people in the world. ♫

So, there’s no future in Finland?

And yet the Finnish have umpteen words for snow.

Mandarin has no tenses at all. Also no plurals.

Mandarin has no tenses at all. Also no plurals.

Free those poor bears ya jerks!

“You don’t bring me milk bones any more.”

Isn’t it rich?

Are we a pair?

Me here at last on the ground,

You in mid-air.

Send in the clones.

Isn’t it bliss?

Don’t you approve?

One who keeps tearing around,

One who can’t move.

Where are the clones?

Send in the clones.

It’s because they like to Finnish things.

Her dogs twice, and her husband only once (I think). Her hairdresser, many, many times!

Of course, a lot of languages don’t have a proper future tense, e.g. japanese. Even german didn’t have one until the middle ages, when that construct was retrofitted from latin (actually, here it’s still very common to use the present for an action in the future). And equally not surprising, a lot of languages do have concepts that absolutely don’t transfer back to english…

A lot of uniformed comments about the future tense as usual. It is not at all difficult to believe that Finnish has no future tense because English doesn’t have one either. That doesn’t mean that we cannot talk about the future simply that there is no verb form that directly expresses the future tense.

In Finnish, the present tense is used, as in the example.

Tomorrow I am going to the park.

Note that the usage is perfectly understandable in English too. But in English,

Tomorrow I will be going to the park.

is obviously the better known version. Isn’t that future tense? Well no. If you examine it you have all present tense verbs …

will, ie. intend tobe going

There are but two English tenses, present and past. Expression of the future is conducted entirely in either the present ….

I will/shall go

or occasionally in both tenses …

I will have been alive for 20 years tomorrow

As much as I wish I could’ve cloned my late dog (I really miss him!), I know it would’ve been in looks only. No way you car exactly replicate experiences of 10 years to form the same personality.

Wonder how many times Streisand has been cloned? One too many I’d wager.

I just hope no one clones Barbra Streisand. If they do, tell Vanna you want to buy an extra “A” this time.

bound to happen….Can’t we just Finish this?….

Coincidentally, Babs’ face is also a clone of the original

Don’t really care about future tense or the lack thereof. However, the fact there are bears living in a moat is really sad and some idiot cloning a dog when so many are dying in shelters is just pathetic.

Not the same bears, though.

I wish I could have cloned my cat