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I said the sentence

I'd been pronouncing the word wrong until a native speaker pointed out for me.

I doubt whether it's natural or not. So I posted it on a language exchange app. A native speaker pointed it out that this sentence should read as

I've been pronouncing the word wrong until a native speaker pointed it out to me.

Now I accept the revision of the "point out" part. But after giving some thought to the grammar rules, I think it's better to use the past perfect continuous tense at the beginning since the action of "pointing out" happens in the past. What do you think?

1 Answer 1

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I've confirmed that it should be

I'd been pronouncing the word wrong until a native speaker pointed it out to me.

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  • 1
    You are correct about the tense, and the "native speaker" is wrong.
    – verbose
    Jan 12, 2017 at 3:28
  • @verbose, why would "native speaker" be wrong?
    – Andrew
    Jan 12, 2017 at 4:14
  • @Andrew many "native speakers" don't speak standard English. For example in some parts of the UK many native speakers say "aksing" and "aksed", not "asking" and "asked". Of course "axing" and "axed" are perfectly standard words, with a different meaning! And one could start another debate about whether the OP's sentence should be "wrongly", instead of "wrong"...
    – alephzero
    Jan 12, 2017 at 8:24
  • @Andrew "why" is a metaphysical question.
    – verbose
    Jan 12, 2017 at 8:38
  • @Andrew Lots of native speakers don't intuitively grasp the nuances of the less commonly-used tenses. Especially in informal speech people use the "wrong" tense all the time. Of course, whether or not that makes it the right tense is another question...
    – Muzer
    Jan 12, 2017 at 9:36

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