The day we played conjugation tag - and MEANT it!

During our grammar classes we have to play conjugation tag. The lecturer tagged a friend of mine, chose me to scribe on the board and a girl to set his verb and tense. She chose courir in the passe simple. We all dread the passe simple, and courir is a tricky little verb.

Anyway, after a bit of toing and froing the lecturer started him off, "je courai". Now at this point alarm bells rang, so I took a quick look in my Palm verbs program, and I saw another chum looking in his Bescherelle and yes, she had started wrong. These verbs can be tricky little critters and if you start wrong it's not easy to get them to come out right. After a few persons, though, the lecturer realised what had happened and we retraced our footsteps: "je courus, tu courus, il courut, nous courumes, vous courutes, ils coururent" (I, you, etc ran).

Now it was my friend's turn to set a verb and tense for the girl. No more Mr Nice Guy! He chose - something like penser (nice, easy verb), but in the - futur anterieur.

Now the futur anterieur is not that bad, really, but the name scares the sense out of your head. So it took a while to get going, but it is just "j'aurai pense, tu auras pense, etc..." it's just the aur+ bit that changes. (I, you, etc will have thought).

But this was the first time I saw conjugation tag get a bit ... mean. I mean futur anterieur! That's not kind!