I fondly remember my first week of Spanish class in Guatemala when I spoke only in present tense. I am. You are. He/She is. We are. You are. They are. Even that was tough because of the two kinds of being--ser and estar. Permanent, impermanent.
But it gets so much more complicated when you start to situate yourself in time.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to live in a different mood, not even a tense. The subjunctive mood. It requires a complete reorientation regarding possibility. I have to think about whether things are real or just possible. Then I have to make the endings match the meaning. Learning languages is magical and maddening. To think that I have to completely alter the way I view the world and wrap my tongue around it.
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