Learning English

Over the past couple weeks I've been helping Helen, one of the girls at Amantaní with her English, and have begun to realise just what it must be like for foreigners to learn the weird quirks of the language!

For example, did you know that all regular verbs in the past tense can be grouped into three groups? As far as I was concerned, you just need to add -ed. Helen would promise you she wished it were that easy! Firstly, how do you describe the difference between 'miss' and 'missed'? Think about it, and you kind of add some sort of 't' to the end. So pretty much 'want' and 'wanted' should sound the same? Wrong of course! Now you need remember to pronounce that -ed as an -ed. But to make a rule about words ending in t's and not in t's would be too easy of course, whoever says 'I rest-ed last night'? Maybe the image of strict old English teacher, but in Helen's case, she needs to know to recognise 'I restid last night' as meaning 'I relaxed', which, it should be noted, will sound like 'relaxt'.

And then there's the other type of past tense - "Did you do it last night?", "Yes, I did it". I'll only confuse myself trying to think about which of the did's corresponds to the do's. Helen seems to have got the dids and dos sorted in her mind, she must be smarter than me...