PLAIN ENGLISH LESSON 6

Dear Comrade:

We have this week another lesson in verbs. Do not be discouraged if you do not understand it all at once. Little by little, it will grow clearer and you will master this important word.

The verb may seem involved to you, but a little application will soon make it clear. It is the most important word in the language to master. It almost seems as though the verb were a living, thinking thing. It changes outward form to accommodate itself to its subject in the number form and person form change. If it is entertaining a subject in the singular it adopts one dress; if it is entertaining a plural subject, more than one, the verb wears a different dress.

So also if the subject is the first person, the person speaking, or the second person, the person spoken to, or the third person, the person spoken of, the verb accommodates itself to the subject. The verb is the most agreeable thing for it changes its form to agree with its subject! So watch your verb and see that it agrees.

Refer constantly to your list of irregular verbs given in this lesson for we so often make mistakes in the use of these verb forms.

Then, too, the verb kindly changes its form to accommodate itself to the time of the action—action in the present, in the past, in the future—action completed before the present time—before some time past—or before some future time—and action progressing and not yet completed in the present, in the past or in the future. Then it can also change to show whether its subject is acting or being acted upon. Isn't the verb a wonderfully accommodating member of the co-operative commonwealth of words?

And can you not see hidden under all this, a marvelous development in the intellectual needs of men from the day of the savage's signs and grunts to the day when we can express such shades of meaning? This tool of expression, language, has had a wonderful evolution side by side with the evolution of the other tools by which man expresses his creative genius; from the forked stick with which man scratched the soil to the great machine-driven plow of today; from the simple threshing flail to the monster threshing machine of modern times.

There is nothing so wonderful as man's ability to express himself. Add a little to your knowledge every day and the sum total will soon surprise you.

Yours for Education,

THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

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