Hammer-Just

Isn't it weird when you talk about something in the past tense that just happened a few seconds ago?

Me: "My toe hurts..."
Dan: "What'd you do?"
Me: "I stubbed it just a second ago!"

Wouldn't it be easier, more efficient and less wordy if there was a "recent" past tense and a regular past tense? There must be a language out there that does something like this, but I don't know it. Spanish, and African-American English to some extent, have various sorts of past tenses like finite past and imperfect (past event that continued).

There's some hypothesis I heard somewhere that says that the -ed ending on verbs comes from the slow addition of the word "did" to the end. So:
  I hammer-did the nail.
  Hammer did --> Hammer-did --> Hammerdid --> hammerid --> Hammerd
  I hammerd the nail.

I don't know if that's how they think it happened or if it happened or if it's even a valid hypothesis. However, I would like to create the "recent" past tense with a similar process.

  I hammer-just the nail.
  I hammerst the nail.

I createst a tense. Go forth and speak about toe stubbings.

posted by Sarah @ 12:58 PM