According to Wiktionary (which is never wrong), "speaks" is

   "Third-person singular simple present indicative form of 'speak'."

All of which sounds really, really complicated.

In fact, just the other day I was thinking about this. The rules of 
English grammer (and, I presume, every other language on the face on the 
Earth) are very complicated indeed. And yet, almost everybody is easily 
able to work them out. Even though most people don't conciously know 
what the rules of grammar are, they manage to learn and apply them!

(For example, ask some random person on the street if "I are slept" is 
correct English, they will almost certainly tell you it's wrong. Far 
fewer people will be able to explain *why* it's wrong.)

That's really mental...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> According to Wiktionary (which is never wrong), "speaks" is
>
>    "Third-person singular simple present indicative form of 'speak'."
>
> All of which sounds really, really complicated.
>
> In fact, just the other day I was thinking about this. The rules of
> English grammer (and, I presume, every other language on the face on the
> Earth) are very complicated indeed. And yet, almost everybody is easily
> able to work them out. Even though most people don't conciously know
> what the rules of grammar are, they manage to learn and apply them!
>
> (For example, ask some random person on the street if "I are slept" is
> correct English, they will almost certainly tell you it's wrong. Far
> fewer people will be able to explain *why* it's wrong.)
>
> That's really mental...

grammar

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nemesis wrote:

> grammar

Ooo, you mean I can't spell? Gosh, I had no idea...

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> And yet, almost everybody is easily able to work them out. Even though 
> most people don't conciously know what the rules of grammar are, they 
> manage to learn and apply them!
>
> (For example, ask some random person on the street if "I are slept" is 
> correct English, they will almost certainly tell you it's wrong. Far fewer 
> people will be able to explain *why* it's wrong.)
>
> That's really mental...

That's because the human brain is much faster at pick'n'mix from a huge look 
up table than following grammar rules to form phrases.

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>> That's really mental...
> 
> That's because the human brain is much faster at pick'n'mix from a huge 
> look up table than following grammar rules to form phrases.

The human brain's power of associative memory is truly astonishing.

For example, how many people do you know? Or rather, how many people's 
faces do you recognise? It's a way bigger number than you think. Just 
think about how many famous actors or politicians you'd recognise by 
face (even if you can't remember anything else about them) and you have 
a really big number. Just look at one of these faces and typically 
within a few seconds you've remembered who they are. That's a pretty 
fast index lookup for a machine with a 200 MHz clock speed. ;-)

On the other hand, it doesn't already work right. Sometimes utterly 
unrelated things become associated. For example, my brain has an 
abnormality where the word "normally" registers as "tourmaline". 
Similarly, sometimes "Pacific" registers as "specific". I have no idea 
whether normal brains do this...

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Invisible wrote:
> According to Wiktionary (which is never wrong), "speaks" is
> 
>    "Third-person singular simple present indicative form of 'speak'."
> 
> All of which sounds really, really complicated.
> 
> In fact, just the other day I was thinking about this. The rules of
> English grammer (and, I presume, every other language on the face on the
> Earth) are very complicated indeed. And yet, almost everybody is easily
> able to work them out. Even though most people don't conciously know
> what the rules of grammar are, they manage to learn and apply them!

And English just has "speak", "speaks", "spoke", "spoken", and "speaking". 
Compare to:

http://www.spanishdict.com/conjugate/hablar

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> And English just has "speak", "speaks", "spoke", "spoken", and "speaking". 

To be fair, there's a lot more tenses than that, except you use multiple 
verbs and conjugate the other verbs.  We even have a verb that means nothing 
except it carries the conjugation along.

I speak.
He speaks.
I spoke.
I have spoken.
I am speaking.
I have been speaking.
I will speak.
I will be speaking.
I will have been speaking.
Do I speak?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Yes, we're traveling togeher,
   but to different destinations.

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On 21/03/2010 3:09 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> And English just has "speak", "speaks", "spoke", "spoken", and
>> "speaking".
>
> To be fair, there's a lot more tenses than that, except you use multiple
> verbs and conjugate the other verbs. We even have a verb that means
> nothing except it carries the conjugation along.
>
> I speak.
> He speaks.
> I spoke.
> I have spoken.
> I am speaking.
> I have been speaking.
> I will speak.
> I will be speaking.
> I will have been speaking.
> Do I speak?
>

Thus spake Darren ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> And English just has "speak", "speaks", "spoke", "spoken", and
>> "speaking".
> 
> To be fair, there's a lot more tenses than that, except you use multiple
> verbs and conjugate the other verbs.  We even have a verb that means
> nothing except it carries the conjugation along.
> 
> I speak.
> He speaks.
> I spoke.
> I have spoken.
> I am speaking.
> I have been speaking.
> I will speak.
> I will be speaking.
> I will have been speaking.
> Do I speak?

Same for person. English adds the appropriate article before the verb. 
Spanish has six different forms (one per grammatical person) for each tense.

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news: 4ba670f1@news.povray.org...
> Spanish has six different forms (one per grammatical person) for each 
> tense.
please define "grammatical person"  :)

Marc

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