Plain English

Undergarment

Underhand

Water-mark

Woodwork

Workshop

PLAIN ENGLISH

LESSON 10

Dear Comrade:

We have been studying this course in Plain English for some weeks now and I trust that you have been enjoying as well as benefiting by the study of our wonderful and expressive language. Did you ever stop to think what a wonderful step it was in evolution when man first began to use the spoken word? And yet it was a still more wonderful step in advance when he began to use the written word for our highest evolution, and development would have been impossible without the help of written speech. An illiterate man may be a good workman and prosperous so far as the material things of life and his immediate contact with his fellow men are concerned, but we have only to think for a moment of what this world would be if we had no written language, to understand what a mighty power it has been in evolution.

Suppose we had no way by which we could communicate with our friends at a distance. Suppose there were no written words by which we could set down the countless dealings between man and man. What a hopeless tangle this social life of ours would soon become! Suppose also that we had no knowledge of the past, no knowledge of the discoveries and inventions of past generations except that which could be handed down to us through oral speech. All our knowledge of history, of the deeds and development of the past, all the observations by which science has uncovered to us the mysteries of nature would be largely lost to us. It was the invention of writing alone which made possible man's growth from barbarism to civilization, and it is more true than we oftentimes realize, that it is "only a wall of books that separates the civilized man of to-day from the savage of yesterday." And yet I wonder if we have ever stopped to think how this art of writing developed. Knowledge of the alphabet and of the letters by which we form our words and hence are able to express our ideas, has become such a common-place thing to us that we have forgotten what a wonder it is and how it has slowly grown and developed through the centuries. Yet there are races to-day that have no written language such as we know and to whom our written language seems truly a miracle.

The story is told of an Indian who was sent from one colony to another with four loaves of bread accompanied by a letter stating their number. The Indian ate one of the loaves and of course, was found out. The next time when he was sent upon a similar errand he repeated the theft but he took the precaution to hide the letter under a stone while he was eating the bread so that it might not see him!

But it is only the things that we do not understand which we invest with mystery and as we study the story of the alphabet in this series of letters we find that it has been a natural development accomplished by the growing powers of man. In succeeding letters we will trace this most interesting story of the alphabet.

    Yours for Education,
    THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

HELPING VERBS

168. We have found that whenever a verb is used by itself in making an assertion it denotes either present or past time. When we use a verb phrase, it expresses some other time than the past or present. These verb phrases are formed by using shall, will, have, had, and the various forms of the verb be with some form of the principal verb. These verbs which help to form verb phrases are called helping, or auxiliary verbs. Auxiliary means helping.

We have used have and had with the past participle to form the present perfect and past perfect time forms. We have used shall and will with different forms of the verb to denote future time, and we have used different forms of the verb be in making the various other time forms. So shall, will, have, had and the various forms of the verb be are helping verbs, which we use to help us in making verb phrases.

169. But these are not all of the helping verbs. There are other helping verbs which we use in forming verb phrases to express different ideas. These are such verbs as should and would, may and might, can and could, must and ought, do and did.

Exercise 1

Fill the blank spaces in the following sentences with the appropriate forms of the helping verbs, shall, will, have, had and be.

1. When......the workers organize?

2. Education......help us win.

3. The world......had enough of war.

4. We......deceived by the masters.

5. The workers......organized into craft unions.

6. They......never ceased the struggle.

7. The state......founded on exploitation.

8. Mutual aid......been an important factor in evolution.

9. The truth......taught to the people.

10. The victory......gained by the proletariat.

11. The nations of Europe......preparing for war for years.

12. The International......recognized war for defense.

13. We......not made the class distinctions, but we......recognize them as long as they exist.

14. The evolution of animals and the evolution of plants......proceeded according to the same general laws.

15. We......never win while the majority remains ignorant.

16. The strikers......betrayed by their leaders.

SHOULD AND WOULD

170.Should and would are the past-time forms of shall and will. We use them to express action or existence dependent upon some condition, thus:

I should go if I were well enough.

He should join us if you asked him.

In these sentences should and would express action which is possible now or will be in the future, provided some other action takes place.

The same distinction which we found made in the use shall and will has been made with should and would; that is, that should used with the first person, expresses action dependent upon condition; but would, used with the first person, implies exercise of the will. This rule is not closely followed, though it expresses a nice distinction in the use of should and would. In ordinary usage we use either should or would with the first person without any distinction of meaning, as for example:

I should struggle on even if it meant death.

I would stand for my principles though I stood entirely alone.

We do not use should however, with the second and third persons to express an action or existence dependent upon some condition. Should used with the second and third person implies obligation. Would is used with the second or third person to express an action dependent upon some condition, as for example:

He would not go, even if you insisted.

They would come if you invited them.

You would believe him if you could hear him.

You would be surprised if I should tell you the reason.

171.Should and would in all of the sentences which we have quoted are used to express action or existence dependent upon some condition which is expressed in that part of the sentence introduced by such conjunctions as if and though.

The parts of the sentence introduced by these conjunctions express the condition upon which the other action is dependent. When we use should in sentences without this condition, it means practically the same as ought, and implies an obligation. We use should with the first and second and third persons when we use it with this meaning, as for example: