Re: Grammatical Gender

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> Myself, I was puzzled, when first getting acquainted with the English language, why anybody would want to use 'am', are' and 'is' for the same word, I mean, they all mean "er" in my language (Swedish är)? So, perhaps as a native speaker of the language, you are the one I should ask: Why do you all do a silly thing like that?

I suspect it's "I'm" and the enclitic <'s> that keep the difference going. We made a start on simplification with the substandard merged negative "ain't".