I would like to have a conversation with whoever invented Spanish–
And I know what you’re thinking
“No one invented Spanish. It’s a language; it just sort of happened.”
And if you said that, I’d laugh
Because there’s no way that language just happened.
It is the result of many years of hard work,
Shaping it just right
So that every Spanish student could one day in Spanish class sit up
And realize that whoever invented Spanish was just trying to screw with us.

For starters, what’s with the uncertainty?

In English, if you want to express uncertainty, you say “I’m not sure”
At the beginning of your sentence.
In Spanish, you also say I’m not sure
But then you use the subjunctive
But only if there’re two subjects
And UWEIRDO applies,
Or METCHAD,
Which could just as easily be MATCHED but isn’t
Because even the mnemonics are weird for this language
Or ESCAPA
Or even the unknown,
Because that needs its own chapter and two grammar tests.
And this is all assuming it takes place in the present
Because in the past it’s the imperfect subjunctive.
But what if it’s a completed action or habitual?
Then it just becomes preterite and it’s still uncertain
About as uncertain as I am about Spanish uncertainty.
Well, what if you’re in the past,
Trying to say the future, which is the present, is uncertain?
Because then it’s the conditional
Or the future, if you do it right.
But in the present, the future only expresses fact
While the conditional expresses uncertainty
Or politeness, whichever.
And then since that wasn’t enough, this cruel cruel man adds the if statements.
In English, there is one form of if statement.
It goes like this:
If I fail this Spanish test, I will not graduate
Now in Spanish, you’d have to decide first off
How certain am I of this uncertainty?
Because if you’re certain
That in the unlikely event the uncertainty actually occurs
You will certainly behave in a certain way, then it’s just the indicative, no harm done.
But if this hypothetical statement is too hypothetical
Then it’s the imperfect subjunctive
But I thought there had to be two subjects with that one?
Well, you thought wrong.

And if the uncertainty wasn’t enough, there’s also the past tense.

In most normal languages,
There is one past tense.
This makes sense,
Because there’s really only one situation to use the past tense
But that guy who made up Spanish gave us his two pence
‘Wouldn’t it be too boring? Wouldn’t it seem contrived or worse, copied?’
And hence
He figured there ought to be two
But the differences between them would be so subtle it would be really impossible to decide which to use.
I’m stuck asking myself:
Habitual or completed?
But of course, if it’s a completed emotion, it’s imperfect.
And honestly this whole system seems imperfect because there only has to be
One past tense
And no one would be confused
And it could be used
For everyday and yesterday and once a year and even while another action is taking place
And while we’re at it
Let’s make the one past tense the imperfect
Because there’s only three irregulars and that’s some sort of record
And it’s clear this guy invented the imperfect last
And was bored and wanted to be done
Because otherwise every car gar zar verb would be irregular
And all the verbs with the letter A
And all the ones that started with a consonant,
Because why not?

And speaking of conjugations…

I understand the present tense;
That’s easy.
O as a and so on.
And the preterite? That’s well enough.
There’re far too many irregular verbs:
Irregular stem changers,
Boot verbs, sandal verbs, stiletto high heel verbs
And uggs
And knock-off uggs that look the same.
O to u in the bottom two
I to e just sort of whenever you feel like it.
And this makes it impossible to ever actually speak Spanish because
Suddenly the verbs have so many syllables they hamper speech
And it takes so long to mentally conjugate by the time you’ve done it
Whoever you’re talking to has left.
But aside from that, the preterite’s fine.
Then you get to the subjunctive and suddenly you pause and ask the world ‘what?’
There’s no way that over time Spanish evolved from Latin and spontaneously
And across all borders,
The subjunctive became the first person singular present tense form
with the o taken off
and the ir/er endings added to ar verbs and vice versa.
And then, of course, the car gar zar verbs have to become a nuisance.
And honestly, at this point, everyone’s realized someone sat down and made up the conjugation
And then he ran out of conjugation ideas before he ran out of verb tenses so he reused them or sort of mashed them together in new ways,
As seen in the imperfect subjunctive.
Take the plural third person preterite form of a verb
And then take the ron off
And remember, at this point you’ve forgotten how to conjugate in the preterite
And all the irregulars are new
And you’re left in a deep abyss, climbing out with ger-ending verbs as foot holds
Dijeron doesn’t have two ‘I’s?
And the stem changers float all around you like flies and you can’t remember
Hubo or haya? Is poner pude or puse?
So after you retake Spanish 2, you drop the ron,
And then you add ra ras ra and so on,
And you ask,
Why drop ron if we just put the r back on?
But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you’ve taken a two syllable verb tengo
And turned it into the monstrosity tuvieramos
Which has an accent, of course,
But no one knows where it goes,
And this is why Spanish people speak so fast
Because as their verbs get more complex they get longer
And then maybe no one will notice that they were in the subjunctive but just conjugated like the present.
It’s like the guy who made this language was pulling a practical joke and wanted to see how long before someone called him on it.

And I’m calling him on it now;
I call BS.

Spanish did not evolve naturally
In the same way a pocket watch didn’t form naturally from a piece of scrap metal.
Someone actually sat down and came up with all the crazy rules and little rhyming mnemonics for some ungodly reason.
That’s why they start teaching you Spanish in elementary school and German in high school,
Because German is a normal language with normal rules and five hundred cases but that’s okay
Because at least there aren’t five hundred ways to express uncertainty,
It seems like one’s enough.
And at least the verb conjugations make sense
And you never end up with giants like mantuvieramos, which is far too many syllables and there’s not even a noun yet.
So here I am.
Calling BS.
And I’m going to make my own language
And make everyone at school learn it too
And it’s going to have three past tenses, just to one up Spanish,
And all the verbs will have at least six syllables,
And some might require specific hand motions
And it’ll have so much uncertainty that no one will know how to say anything for certain
And they’ll doubt themselves so much they all crawl into holes and stop talking forever,
Which is sort of the point.