smallwhite wrote:I'm really sick of the present perfect tense being AGAIN a compound tense and AGAIN formed by "have + past participle", that that "have" is AGAIN same as the "have" in "I have a dog", that the past perfect tense is AGAIN formed by shifting the "have" one tense back thus "had + past participle", that there are AGAIN present and past perfect tenses to begin with, that the 6 persons are AGAIN the same 6 persons, that formal you AGAIN equals plural you, that there is AGAIN this tu/vous thing to begin with and that it is AGAIN expressed through conjugation... the only new thing about verbs is there's no infinitive, thus "she likes to sings", but that's hardly a challenge because it's more "she likes that she sings" which is the same as "I am sure I am fine. I expected something more exotic.
Why not try Irish? There's no perfect tense at all, only a periphrastic construction with "I'm after doing...", which is rare to be honest. What's more, there is no verb "to have" at all! If you have things, they "are at you". Needless to say there's no pluperfect, but instead a habitual past that digresses from the regular past tense. Okay, we do have the six Indo-European persons, but there's no T-V distinction. You say "tú" to everybody, which is nice.
What's more, there is no verb for to know, instead "its knowledge is at you". There are no infinitives, only verbal nouns, and yes, the verb comes first in the sentence, which boggles the word order quite a bit. Oh, and most important of all, there are no words for "yes" and "no". Instead, you repeat the verb of the question in either affirmative or negative form. That's quite an exercise, especially for irregular verbs. Then, there are initial mutations and yes, declension often only consists of palatalizing a sound. Did I say there are palatalized and normal consonants in Irish? I didn't? Now, there you go...
Other than that, you could always learn Finnish or Hungarian. Makes for quite a nice change as well!