Timeline for Team A played/has played well
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 22 at 16:17 | comment | added | Lambie | Oh and by the way, it's automatic for me in French. You're just used to seeing learners here who are not very advanced. | |
| May 22 at 16:15 | comment | added | Lambie | @FumbleFingers Rubbish? Your advice is use it when you need it? That means you have to think about it whether you need it. To use an example of learning a language. I had to learn when to use passé composé versus imperfect (French), there was no way around it. Just telling people over and over to avoid it is what is rubbish. As Paul said above, it is a disservice. I reckon what is really going on is that you become annoyed at having to repeat explanations about it. | |
| May 22 at 15:51 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Lambie: Rubbish. We're native speakers, so obviously it's "automatic" for us to know when to use Perfect forms, and when not. Very few non-native speakers ever get anywhere near that (and those that have probably won't need to be asking for guidance here! :) My dictum simply advises learners to stop thinking so much about the usage, and to just treat "avoid the Perfect" as the default position. On those few specific occasions where that generates the wrong utterance, quite likely it will be pointed out occasionally - enough so that after a few mistakes the learner will get that one right. | |
| May 22 at 15:43 | comment | added | Lambie | @FumbleFingers You said: all you need to know is Don't use the Perfect verb form if you don't need it. Well, that's ridiculous because one has to expend mental effort for that. By the time you expend that effort you should, if you have studied this, be able to use the right verb form. Also, over time, the use of one or the other should become automatic. | |
| May 19 at 2:02 | history | became hot network question | |||
| May 19 at 2:01 | vote | accept | prof1589 | ||
| May 18 at 18:23 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Haha! Chatgpt is actually quite good at coming up with contextually apposite new names for things. If it had been around when ELL was being set up, Chatgpt would probably have advised us to call it Perfect your English! | |
| May 18 at 18:16 | comment | added | Paul Tanenbaum | Well, @FumbleFingers, I’ll be the first to admit to occasionally getting the impression that a more accurate name for this SE community than English Language Learners would be English Perfect (and Particularly Past Perfect) Learners. | |
| May 18 at 18:13 | answer | added | Lambie | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 18 at 18:10 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @PaulTanenbaum: We must agree to differ. I know a lot of people disagree with my position on this (including lots of learners who mistakenly assume I'm dismissing them as "not clever enough" to learn all the obscure details intuitively available to native Anglophones). But all I see is an endless stream of people pointlessly trying to include verb forms they don't understand, when all they really need to do is concentrate on finding the simplest acceptable phrasing that gets the message across. | |
| May 18 at 18:01 | comment | added | Paul Tanenbaum | Okay, @FumbleFingers, but for my money, your advising learners not to bother about the perfect—until their proficiency exceeds some threshold?—does them a disservice. For instance, the contexts in which I have given is correct (and I gave is wrong) aren’t particularly rare. And I know l would be sore at any French teacher who advised that je donnais suffices, so I should put off bothering with j’ai donné until I had achieved greater mastery. I grant that the analogy is imperfect (imparfait?) since English verbs don’t work exactly the same as French verbs. But I think you get my point. | |
| May 18 at 17:57 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | ...and as an added bonus for learners who want to speak reasonable English with minimal effort (and who want to make unnecessary effort? :) I'll just point out that OP's option #1 obviates the problem of choosing between pointlessly verbose alternatives and uncertain plurality such as Team A has played well. Team A have played well, Team A has been playing well, etc. KISS rules! | |
| May 18 at 17:49 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @PaulTanenbaum: You're a native speaker, so obviously you can trot out a vast number of contexts where using a Perfect verb form falls somewhere between "acceptable" and "required". Just because in your specific example, if the game is still ongoing you personally might prefer to answer "Team A have been playing well" is no reason why learners should tie themselves in knots trying to copy you. What I'm saying is they don't need to think about using the Perfect there. They'll be just as idiomatic (and far less confused) with "Team A are playing well". | |
| May 18 at 17:42 | comment | added | Paul Tanenbaum | @FumbleFingers, really? “You hardly ever will need [the present perfect]”? What tense would you recommend to a speaker who’s about to answer the question, “I’ve only just arrived—traffic was horrible. How’s the game going?” Surely not, “Team A played well.” | |
| May 18 at 17:15 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | It's hard to imagine a context where even a native Anglophone would come out with #2. As a non-native speaker, all you need to know is Don't use the Perfect verb form if you don't need it. And you hardly ever will need it, so if you're unsure, just assume you don't. You'll rarely be wrong. | |
| May 18 at 16:35 | comment | added | Lambie | We have a ton of answers on here about present perfect and simple past. Once more I will say: It depends on what you want to say, not grammar. You cannot add last week, yesterday etc. to 2). | |
| May 18 at 16:02 | history | asked | prof1589 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |