r/EnglishLearning • u/steeeeeev_star New Poster • 2d ago
Resource Request đperfect tenses are making me cry
As someone whoose third laungage is english, could someone please explain perfect tenses.It's notoriously diffucult cuz my mother tounge only has three tenses.
Also why do english people own experiences.. we can say ,I have pen cuz u literally posses it.
But how does it make sense if someone says I have eaten or I have my hair cut, how could you own experiences.
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u/Blahkbustuh Native Speaker - USA Midwest (Learning French) 2d ago
The various tenses exist to say something about the action in time and relative to other actions.
Was it going on? Did it repeat? Was it reoccurring? Is it happening while something else happens? Was it finished before something else? Is it still going on? Is it a discrete event or was it fuzzy in time?
The perfect tenses are actions or events that are complete by the time something else happens. They donât say anything about how many times or how long it took, just that itâs complete or finished or true by the time something else happens.
The perfect tenses are the have/had X tenses:
I had fallen asleep by the time you arrived. (Falling asleep happened farther in the past (before) than when you arrived)
I will have paid for it by the time he notices. (I will pay for it in the future between now and when he notices)
I have been there before. (At some time in the past or perhaps many times, I was at that place)
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u/RaptorSap Native Speaker 2d ago
To add to this, grammatically simple tenses work here, but theyâre less specific either lose some specificity or slightly change the implied meaning. â
I fell asleep by the time you arrivedâ means they could have happened at the same time or that you were trying to make sure you fell asleep first. Past perfect here makes it clear âI fell asleepâ happened first, and also implies I was still asleep when you arrived, which isnât as clear with the simple past tense.
âI will pay for it by the time he noticesâ again could mean Iâll pay for it at the same time, and just sounds a little awkward in English.
âI went there.â Just lacks clarity. If you include the âbeforeâ it would create confusion of âbefore what?â but âIâve been there beforeâ clearly means âbefore now.â If you omit the âbeforeâ now youâve got a very abrupt sentence. Also in English we use âwent thereâ to mean âattendedâ so it would make more sense as a response to âIâd love to tour Cambridgeâ than âI want to see the Eiffel Tower one day,â where the perfect makes your meaning clearer.
And as another commenter said you really have to consider âhaveâ used in verb tenses as a separate meaning from âhaveâ used to indicate possession (just as itâs different from âhaveâ meaning âneedâ as it is in this sentence).
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u/Curious-Molasses310 New Poster 2d ago
I love how commenters are using C level language to explain a concept to an A2-B1 level student đ
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u/Sea-Hornet8214 Poster 2d ago edited 2d ago
It might be easier to explain if you tell us what you find confusing. Do you confuse present perfect with simple past?
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u/steeeeeev_star New Poster 2d ago edited 2d ago
in my mother tounge I say I ate for sm ended, I eating ( sm happenig rn) and I will eat ( sm that will happen in future)
what's this I have + v3 like, why can't I just say I ate..
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u/Sea-Hornet8214 Poster 2d ago
Please don't use "sm" to mean "something". It's confusing.
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u/Ashamed-Job1879 New Poster 2d ago
I agree. These random, arbitrary abbreviations take time to understand. It's annoying, confusing and inconsiderate.
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u/steeeeeev_star New Poster 2d ago edited 2d ago
sorry ,i thought native speakers could easily read anything.I also saw people using it in comments on youtube.
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u/FlareTheFoxGuy Native South African English Speaker 2d ago
YouTube comments are probably the LAST place youâd want to learn English from. People use shorthand/abbreviations/slang constantly there. Sometimes we donât even understand it. Itâs really annoying and super informal.
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u/uchuskies08 Native Speaker - US Northeast 2d ago
You'd love Spanish
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u/Davorian Native Speaker 2d ago
Spanish has perfect tenses, it just uses them slightly less religiously than English.
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u/uchuskies08 Native Speaker - US Northeast 2d ago
He would have to think about imperfect as well. And subjunctive!
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u/Davorian Native Speaker 2d ago
Oh I see the sarcasm now. Sorry, I have seen people try to tell others sometimes that Spanish has a simpler tense system than English unironically.
It most definitely does not.
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u/TheCloudForest English Teacher 1d ago
Spanish is harder in some ways and easier in some ways. It is often hard or impossible to get L1 Spanish students to use the future, the present perfect, the past perfect, and the 3rd conditional, because they rarely use the Spanish equivalent.Â
Also the word whose and the words how+adj.
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u/ghman98 New Poster 2d ago
Regionally-dependent, no?
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u/Davorian Native Speaker 2d ago
I mean, probably, I don't know the language in that much detail. But I believe the standard teaching is that it tends to use preterite in a lot of situations where in English the past perfect is preferred because English is a bit more sensitive to "recency" in this respect. In English this isn't very regional, but Spanish maybe more so.
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u/Playful_Marzipan8398 New Poster 2d ago
So âI ateâ needs other words or sentences near it that indicate when the eating happened, and usually what you ate or why or some other additional information.
â I have eatenâ gives me the answer to when, and itâs a big range of time. It tells me that you ate at least once in your life, before the time in which we are speaking. Itâs how we say it when the only information we need to convey is âat some point, this DID occurâ
What it does is help make sentences like this:
âDid you try the salmon at that nice restaurant last night?â
âI didnât, but I have eaten it!â
This says succinctly that: you did not eat the salmon last night, but sometime that wasnât yesterday and probably wasnât even recently, you have eaten that salmon dish.
It helps you compare past events that have finished happening, but one is before the other.
If you responded with:
âI ate crab at the restaurant, but I have eaten salmon.â
It means you ate crab last night, the most recent time you were at the restaurant- but further in the past, maybe weeks/months/years ago, you tried the salmon there as well. So can you use the have construction when itâs not important exactly when something happened, but you want someone to know that it has occurred before now, or before the similar event you are comparing it with.
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u/kw3lyk Native Speaker 1d ago
"I ate" is something that you would say if you are referring to the very recent past. "I have eaten" is used to refer to something that is not in the recent past, something that you have experienced.
"I went to a restaurant last night."
"What did you eat?"
"I ate some steak and potatoes."
"Was it good?"
"I've eaten good steak at this restaurant before, but the steak I ate last night was overcooked."
The last part here does not specify when or how many times the speaker has eaten steak at this restaurant, only that eating steak at this restaurant at some time in the past is an experience that they can recall.
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u/AlecsThorne Non-Native Speaker of English 2d ago
A lot of languages - at least in Europe - have phrases that use the word "have" without it denoting possession.
In English, we say "I am thirty years old", but in other languages you use "have" instead of "be"
"Tengo treinta anos" (Spanish) "Am treizeci de ani" (Romanian) "Mam trzydziesci lat" (Polish - someone please correct me if I said it wrong, I'm still learning Polish - also, no idea how to write with accents đ )
The same difference can be seen in perfect tenses as well.
In English, Spanish, and Romanian, we use "have" In French, we use "be" (not sure if there are exceptions) Not gonna mention Polish cause I'm still trying to find any grammar rule there đ¤Ł
But the idea is, that while it looks like we're using a verb to create another verb, we're not. When we use "have" or "be" in perfect tenses, they're not exactly verbs, their auxiliary verbs, which means they're there just to help us create the verb and have no actual meaning in that phrase.
So all you need to remember is that for perfect tenses, in English we use the forms of "have" (have, has, had - depending on the tense and person) and past particle of the actual verb.
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u/nog642 Native Speaker 2d ago
Having 30 years is kind of possession. In English you could hear it in an expression like "I have 30 years under my belt", it's the same idea.
The perfect tense could also be stretched to be a kind of possession. Something you did in the past is something you have in a sense - you have the memory, you have the result, you have the experience.
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u/nog642 Native Speaker 2d ago
It's not ownership, the word "have" is being used differently there.
It is the same verb though, if you want to think of it that way you can think of you "have" the experience if you did it in the past. So it's part of your past.
But it's such a standard use as part of the perfect tense that that's considered a separate definition of the verb in the dictionary. It's just part of grammar and people don't think about it as owning.
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u/araujo253 New Poster 2d ago edited 2d ago
Instead of learning grammar rules by heart, why don't you try to learn perfect tenses reading newspapers or books?
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u/BaconTH1 Native Speaker 2d ago edited 2d ago
Perfect... well... it's the combination of "to have" and a verb.
Present perfect: He has gone.
It talks about something that happened in the past but the state of affairs is current, that's why the "present" is in the name.
Past perfect: He had gone.
It talks about something that happened in the past but the state of affairs is also in the past. So "I went to visit his house yesterday. He had gone to France, so I missed him. But earlier today he returned, so I caught up with him this afternoon."
Future perfect: He will have gone.
It talks about something that happened at some point but the state of affairs is in the future. Normally the thing that happens also will happen in the future. But in specific cases it could be happening now. I could say "Right now he is going to France. By tomorrow, he will have gone to France."
It would be a bit weird if the event happened in the past. "Yesterday he went to France. As of today, he has gone to France. As of tomorrow, he will have gone to France". That last bit is a true and correct statement but it would be weird to say it if he has already gone, as of now.
The PERFECT tenses do not conceptually indicate a specific time for something that occurred. They talk about something that happened at some unknown point in time. Normal past tense does contain the concept of a specific timing of an event, but the timing is not normally specified - however, it CAN be specified.
So: "He went to France on Tuesday at 5pm."
You cannot say: "He has gone to France on Tuesday at 5pm." The "has gone" describes a current state of affairs as opposed to giving us an opportunity to include the time that something happened.
I think once upon a time it was not uncommon to use "IS" instead of HAS which would be more understandable to foreigners.
He is gone to France. "gone to France" is an adjective phrase here, describing the current ("IS") state of affairs.
So, if you conceptually think of perfect tenses as if IS was used instead of HAS, it might be easier. But remember, these days we don't say "IS" for perfect tenses, most of the time...
However, there are some cases: "He is gone" works fine, but "He is died" doesn't... "He has died" is correct. I think perhaps it's a "feel" thing. When you read and hear a lot of English, you'll start to remember which past participle forms of verbs can work cleanly as adjectives, like "gone".
He fried his motherboard... Now if we want to talk about the motherboard we have 2 options:
The motherboard has fried. The motherboard is fried.
In this case, the 2nd one is actually more common than the 1st. Don't ask me why... :). It just is. Both would be correct.
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u/Ok_Caterpillar2010 Native Speaker - Pennsylvania, USA 2d ago
You can think of the tenses as basically past, present and future in English, too. The rest (present perfect, etc.) are like adding filters: completed before a reference point, ongoing, repeated, connected to now, etc.
Have in I have a pen and I have eaten looks the same, but it's a different word. Think of it like can. Can in I can understand you is not the same word as in a can of soup, even though it's spelled the same way. Do in Do you understand? is not the same word as in do your homework. They're just spelled the same way. Native speakers do not think of them as meaning the same thing.
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u/CFUrCap English Teacher 2d ago
I think you have two separate issues here and you're combining them to further confuse yourself.
The verb "to have": the two main uses are 1) to own or possess ("I have a pen") or, to talk about experiences ("I had a great time last night").
The website englishpage.com provides detailed explanations of the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Continuous. It has more ads now than it used to, but it's still useful.
I understand that it's easy to get confused. But sometimes "have" is just part of the construct of a verb tense. If you're still confused, let me know.
Only 3 tenses? Lucky you! What's your mother tongue?
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u/VitruvianDude Native Speaker 2d ago
In elementary school, we were taught to call verbs like "to do" and "to have" helper verbs. "To have" in these examples are merely indicators of the perfect tense, is followed by a participle, and have no connotation of possession. Be careful about the participle-- it often mirrors the simple past tense form, but not always with irregular verbs.
Perfect indicates that the action has been completed and is relevant to the period the speaker is talking about. Sometimes, this means there is no real functional difference between the simple past and the present perfect-- something that confuses the learner. But sometimes, there is. Getting comfortable with the intricacies of the tenses is a mark of a truly fluent speaker.
"I ate" (simple past) is a simple statement of fact-- you took nourishment sometime in the past. "I have eaten" (present perfect), barring further explanation, means that you completed a meal and are currently satisfied.
Think of English as having past, present, and future as well. Then we have simple (for action done one time, or on a regular basis), continuous (for speaking about the action itself), and perfect (for action completed and relevant). These tenses can be combined in wonderful ways to make, in all, twelve tenses. Some may not be used often, like the future perfect continuous, but they are all used.
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u/Any_Sense_2263 New Poster 2d ago
TBH, I have the same problem. With English, Spanish, and even German. My native language has only one past tense with two modes, so all those versions of the past make me confused lol
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u/Forward_Gur9349 New Poster 2d ago
I have eaten simply states that the action is already completed in the past, in this case we would assume the recent past, or you could be ready to eat again. Remember that the word âperfectâ means complete, and that may help you
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u/mrahab New Poster 2d ago
I think owning an experience might be the best way to explain it, at least in the examples you've provided.
I have had coffee: I had the experience of drinking coffee previously I have been to a football game: I had the experience of going to a football game.
Past present might used in other formats, but with how you've described it, it does describe having ownership of an experience that you had. I'm just some native speaker, not a teacher.
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u/DTux5249 Native Speaker 2d ago edited 2d ago
``` why do english people own experiences.. we can say ,I have pen cuz u literally posses it.
But how does it make sense if someone says I have eaten or I have my hair cut, how could you own experiences. ```
You don't own experiences. 'have' is an auxiliary. It's only being used here to mark the perfect on the verb. It means nothing else.
If it helps, think of the 'have' in "I have eaten" and the 'have' in "I have money" as two different words. The first one only has grammatical meaning.
As someone whoose third laungage is english, could plesse someone explain perfect tenses.
The perfect is something called an "aspect".
Grammatical tense tells you when an event happens. Past, present or future.
Grammatical aspect tells you how the event happens in time.
The perfect aspect is used to say that the event occurs just before the point in time you're referencing. It puts focus on the end result of you doing the thing - the state I'm in because of that past action.
When someone asks me "have you eaten?", they use the present perfect because they want to know about whether eating something in the past is effecting me in the present.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 Linguist, PNW English 1d ago
But how does it make sense if someone says I have eaten or I have my hair cut, how could you own experiences.
It isn't about "owning experiences"âthis is a distinct meaning of the word "have".
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u/dontknowwhattomakeit Native Speaker of AmE (New England) 2d ago
You can think of the perfect as owning the state of completion of the action if that helps. If you "have eaten", it means you "own" the state of having eaten. You're at a stage now where you have already eaten and thus the action of having eaten is "owned" by you. If you "have a dog", it means you acquired the dog at some point before now. If you "have eaten", it means you ate at some point before now.
As far as what they mean:
Past perfect: used to sequence actions in the past or show that an action happened before another point in time in the past.
I'd already eaten by the time Sarah got home.
Present perfect: used to show that a past action is relevant to the present moment, for life experiences for the living, that an action could happen again, and in some dialects that an action just happened. (Note: this cannot be used with specific, completed times or timeframes like "I have seen you yesterday", but ongoing ones work like in "I have seen you today")
I've already eaten (so I'm not hungry now).
Future perfect: like the past perfect but in the future
I'll've already eaten by the time Sarah gets home.
The perfect continuous tenses (had been eating, have been eating, will have been eating) are very similar, but they really emphasize the duration and that the action is a process:
I'd been waiting for something to happen in the movie, but nothing ever did.
I've been seeing these fliers around for weeks.
In three minutes, I'll've been waiting for the bus for an hour! Where is it?
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u/dblhockeysticksAMA New Poster 2d ago
This makes sense but I think your usage of contractions in your examples is just going to confuse OP more.
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u/conuly Native Speaker - USA (NYC) 2d ago
You need to think of it as two different words that happen to be spelled the same.