Language and speech are much about time. When we read, talk, or write, we usually think if the thing is about matters, people, or other objects of thought that — are, were, or will be. We use grammar for the Present, Past, or Future.
However, we cannot touch time. Nobody can see or hear time. Clocks can show values only as we set them, and grammatical time is not the same thing as the hour.
How can we learn the grammatical time, then?
To an extent, we may think about time together with place.
Language can show some of the mind skills we people use to organize own thought. Human minds have a flexible habit to connect time and place. All languages allow some words, as before or after, for both time and place. We could say, after that turn, for a place, and after ten, for a time.
“After ten” says “after the time”.
“After the turn” says “after the place”.
People have evolved grammars along with perception for earthly space. This perception works with grammar also today; it can help keep things simple where we do not need complexity.
Natural fields usually give people impressions about time, as of the seasons, blossoming, or crops.
On a hike, with computer graphics or otherwise, let us envision three fields we could name the PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE. Our imagination can be abstract. It is enough we manage as in fields, for the grammatical time.
We may associate fields, knowledge, and light. Knowledge needs memory.
PAST things happen to go into oblivion, as a learning matter we do not review or work with. For our PAST field of time, we can envision the light as with a clear afternoon: it is not too late to get back with the matter.
We do not have memories of the FUTURE, but we can plan our learning. For our FUTURE field, the shine can be as with sunrise.
It is our PRESENT we have the most potential to shape. In our PRESENT field, the sun is high and daylight broad.
We can picture a word that matters a lot in grammar as well as in life, the verb to be, for the PRESENT, PAST, and FUTURE fields of time.
There are other verbs to matter much in grammar and life, as to have and to do. We can picture them in fields along with ideas for skies and landscapes — with the website ■FREE VISUALS.
Some English grammar books have patterns as Future in the Past or Unreal Past. We can hold on to our three fields: whether we make theory, talk figuratively, or joke, we anyway refer to the past, present, or future.
In Travel ■PART TWO, we do real-time figurative talk.
How important are our three words, be, have, and do? They can be our core grammar words. We can use them to map the grammatical time in language.
When the mapping becomes our habit and nature, we get more real time for word sense. We do not take long to put words in shape.
1.1. Fields of Time: basic practice
Mountains, oceans, vast plains, or the cosmos, it is language form in fields.
1.2. Mind practice: thinking on purpose
We do not know a language really, if it does not belong with our thought.