> I forget what kind of computer it was; an early type of PC that belonged to one of the professors.
As a ESOL speaker, it always baffled me how native English speakers would sometimes use present tense "forget" to write about the past. Why is that? The only other time I see same oddity is with "win". I have seen this in enough of high-profile text to assume they're not just typos.
It’s present tense. Your recollection of all things changes over time. Haven’t you ever been unable to recall something one moment only to remember it later on? They’re saying “I [at present cannot recall]…”
The writers current state is forgetting, so it's not totally unreasonable to use the present tense. The good news about English as a language is that it is very resilient to grammar mistakes, you don't need to do all the rules to make someone get it, get it?
Interesting! I never realized this was a language difference.
In English, if you say "I forget X," it means that you still don't recall the information in the present. For example, "I forget my first phone number," you presumably forgot it before this moment, but saying, "I forget" conveys that you haven't remembered in the meantime.
If you use the past tense, "I forgot," it leaves open the possibility that you remembered the information later. For example, "I ran into Jake at the mall, and I was about to say hi, but I forgot his name." The speaker forgot the information in the past but has since remembered.
The usage here implies that the action is habitual, not continuous, nor final, e.g. "Every time I tell the story, I forget the name". She could have said "I have forgotten", but that implies a finality the writer wants to exclude. If her habitual forgetting was confined to the past, she might have written "I used to forget...".
I think everything you've said is correct; I just wanted to add the idea of an habitual aspect.
Yeah, habitual tense is very subtle in most forms of English.
The meme-famous Oscar Gable quote, "They don’t think it be like it is, but it do," is an example where some vernacular forms of English emphasize it more. Here, "be" is the habitual tense of "to be." It's not "bad" English. It's a tense you're not recognizing.
English has more complicated verbs and tenses than many other languages, and this confusion probably comes from the fact that this conjugation doesn’t exist in your native language. This is one of those edge cases that is very difficult to explain, and I’m no expert.
Things like forgetting and winning would seem to be instantaneous things that don’t ever happen “now” only in the past or future.
“I forget” means something like “I have forgotten at some point and continue to not remember” whereas “I forgot” means “I did forget” without reporting anything on your current state of remembering
“I forget” could also mean “forgetting is a thing i often do and expect to continue to do”
> English has more complicated verbs and tenses than many other languages
I’ve only learned a few other languages, but none of them have simpler sets of tenses than English (most of them have more differences in conjugation/inflection to reflect them, but also more regularity; English also has a fair number of idioms in which the semantics as far as time don't necessarily match what is normal for the syntax of the tense, but I’m not sure its unusually dense with those.)
EDIT: But:
> “I forget” means something like “I have forgotten at some point and continue to not remember” whereas “I forgot” means “I did forget” without reporting anything on your current state of remembering
If you think of “to forget” as equivalent of “to fail to remember something which one once knew” (which I think is the best understanding of that verb), that’s pretty much just what you’d expect from the present and past tenses, respectively.
I'm actually a native English speaker (30yo), and feel this might actually be a recent usage? I think I started noting it as an oddity in the last decade or so. I kind of like it for the reason mtlynch said, even though you could argue it's less correct than "can't recall". I'm curious if there has actually been a long usage of "forget" this way that I managed to be oblivious of, or if it actually is recent.
I'm not entirely sure why they titled the article this way, as it sounded (to me and others) like LWN is saying goodbye, rather than a staff member retiring from LWN. The former would be very sad. Anyway...
I just wanted to say how high-quality LWN's content is, and very much worth subscribing to -- and it's not just Linux kernel stuff. I wrote several guest articles for them last year, and their editing process is excellent. You definitely cannot bluff; you really have to know what you're talking about, and then explain it clearly. They're (mercifully) allergic to buzzwords and hype. I even had to unlearn using the word "very": I would say "very fast" or "very good" or "very whatever else", and they basically said "cut all the very's, just say fast or good or whatever else, and let the reader decide whether it's very". And their (few) staff members are highly technical, so you get an excellent technical review as well.
They're also a bit allergic to modern styling: I made a couple of minor suggestions and they politely declined. At first I thought their approach was a bit backwards, but on reflection I'd much rather they focus on quality textual content than make changes for the sake "looking modern". Their site works well on phone and desktop, is easy to read, and loads fast; what more could you want?
One thing I do wonder: does LWN have a succession plan? Jon Corbet occasionally reminds us in his dry way that he's not getting any younger, and I know they only have 2 or 3 staff members. I hope that when the time is ripe they line someone else up who has the same focus on content and quality.
Meanwhile, I'm not going anywhere quite yet, but we're definitely looking for writer/editor types who would like to be a part of LWN and perhaps carry it forward in the distant future. Please drop us a note at lwn@lwn.net if you'd like to talk.
The truth of the matter is that, from my perspective, LWN is you. You're a brilliant writer. You've chosen to devote your life to documenting the Linux kernel project. That's an important piece of world history. There are auxiliary folks around you, but crediting them is a little like taking R.R. Martin or JR Tolkien, and saying there's a team, since you need:
- script writers for the movies;
- editors of the books;
- typesetters; or
- whoever makes trinkets from their worlds for Amazon.
Yes, they're all important, but they're not all equally important.
At the heart of it, what you've given us is:
- Documentation of a history of brilliant technical insight and work by other folks
- Documentation of the growth and evolution of one of the first and most successful open communities.
It's a gift to the world.
Thank you for that.
My hope is that whenever you retire -- and ideally before -- there's a plan for /deeply/ archiving LWN. For example, printing out a few hundred copies, and having them archived in secure places, and making it into a book in print. Tossing it onto archive.org. Etc.
My other hope is also that it will eventually all be open-licensed in some way, shape, or form, once the economic value is more limited.
Addressing just that last point: all of our content is CC-BY 4.0 now, with the sole exception of the handful of articles behind the paywall at any given time.
A hearty second to everything you say about LWN’s high quality and standards. The editing process can be more than what an author had bargained for, but the result is always worth it. In my case I received a suggestion to look up what Mark Twain had to say about “very”. I’ve almost abandoned the word completely!
Unless I'm forgetting (Unless I've forgotten, Unless I forget, Unless I forgot...I'm not sure!), LWN is the only "content" I've personally had a paid subscription to for years. Always fun to read a bit of its own story. Thanks Rebecca, Jon, and all!
Fare well in your new life Rebecca, and thanks for sharing your story. You've touched all of ours, changed the world more than most, and have been part of a revolution.
31 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 80.4 ms ] threadIt seems Rebecca had a central role and that they need to do some staffing, but that LWN remains. Thanks for the long story!
I also miss those old days when I was reading Linux Journal from my mailbox.
> I forget what kind of computer it was; an early type of PC that belonged to one of the professors.
As a ESOL speaker, it always baffled me how native English speakers would sometimes use present tense "forget" to write about the past. Why is that? The only other time I see same oddity is with "win". I have seen this in enough of high-profile text to assume they're not just typos.
In English, if you say "I forget X," it means that you still don't recall the information in the present. For example, "I forget my first phone number," you presumably forgot it before this moment, but saying, "I forget" conveys that you haven't remembered in the meantime.
If you use the past tense, "I forgot," it leaves open the possibility that you remembered the information later. For example, "I ran into Jake at the mall, and I was about to say hi, but I forgot his name." The speaker forgot the information in the past but has since remembered.
Hope this helps!
I think everything you've said is correct; I just wanted to add the idea of an habitual aspect.
EDIT: found a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_markers_of_habitual_as...
The meme-famous Oscar Gable quote, "They don’t think it be like it is, but it do," is an example where some vernacular forms of English emphasize it more. Here, "be" is the habitual tense of "to be." It's not "bad" English. It's a tense you're not recognizing.
Things like forgetting and winning would seem to be instantaneous things that don’t ever happen “now” only in the past or future.
“I forget” means something like “I have forgotten at some point and continue to not remember” whereas “I forgot” means “I did forget” without reporting anything on your current state of remembering
“I forget” could also mean “forgetting is a thing i often do and expect to continue to do”
I’ve only learned a few other languages, but none of them have simpler sets of tenses than English (most of them have more differences in conjugation/inflection to reflect them, but also more regularity; English also has a fair number of idioms in which the semantics as far as time don't necessarily match what is normal for the syntax of the tense, but I’m not sure its unusually dense with those.)
EDIT: But:
> “I forget” means something like “I have forgotten at some point and continue to not remember” whereas “I forgot” means “I did forget” without reporting anything on your current state of remembering
If you think of “to forget” as equivalent of “to fail to remember something which one once knew” (which I think is the best understanding of that verb), that’s pretty much just what you’d expect from the present and past tenses, respectively.
> b. To fail to recall to mind; not to recollect.
> 1787 ‘G. Gambado’ Acad. Horsemen 12 He says much the same of rabbits and onions, but I forget how he brings that to bear.
> 1847 F. Marryat Children of New Forest II. i. 3 I forget the sign [of the inn].
[1] https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/73319
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Forget
I just wanted to say how high-quality LWN's content is, and very much worth subscribing to -- and it's not just Linux kernel stuff. I wrote several guest articles for them last year, and their editing process is excellent. You definitely cannot bluff; you really have to know what you're talking about, and then explain it clearly. They're (mercifully) allergic to buzzwords and hype. I even had to unlearn using the word "very": I would say "very fast" or "very good" or "very whatever else", and they basically said "cut all the very's, just say fast or good or whatever else, and let the reader decide whether it's very". And their (few) staff members are highly technical, so you get an excellent technical review as well.
They're also a bit allergic to modern styling: I made a couple of minor suggestions and they politely declined. At first I thought their approach was a bit backwards, but on reflection I'd much rather they focus on quality textual content than make changes for the sake "looking modern". Their site works well on phone and desktop, is easy to read, and loads fast; what more could you want?
One thing I do wonder: does LWN have a succession plan? Jon Corbet occasionally reminds us in his dry way that he's not getting any younger, and I know they only have 2 or 3 staff members. I hope that when the time is ripe they line someone else up who has the same focus on content and quality.
Meanwhile, I'm not going anywhere quite yet, but we're definitely looking for writer/editor types who would like to be a part of LWN and perhaps carry it forward in the distant future. Please drop us a note at lwn@lwn.net if you'd like to talk.
- script writers for the movies;
- editors of the books;
- typesetters; or
- whoever makes trinkets from their worlds for Amazon.
Yes, they're all important, but they're not all equally important.
At the heart of it, what you've given us is:
- Documentation of a history of brilliant technical insight and work by other folks
- Documentation of the growth and evolution of one of the first and most successful open communities.
It's a gift to the world.
Thank you for that.
My hope is that whenever you retire -- and ideally before -- there's a plan for /deeply/ archiving LWN. For example, printing out a few hundred copies, and having them archived in secure places, and making it into a book in print. Tossing it onto archive.org. Etc.
My other hope is also that it will eventually all be open-licensed in some way, shape, or form, once the economic value is more limited.
Thanks for the kind words!
If you are reading LWN it probably looks less frightening than when seeing it on HN.