0

  • this is historical present usage

  • Let's say you are a having a conversation with some random individual, your storytelling a past event during your childhood using present tense and you say:

''Dating back when I was a child, everytime we go to stores, I tend to look at gameboys telling to my dad, ''I want you to buy me that for my birthday''... and yadda yadda yadda...

Did I use the historical present correctly?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

Perhaps OP has misunderstood what historical present (also called dramatic present or narrative present) means. It actually refers to using the present tense when narrating past events - as, for example...

So I'm in the pub the other day, and this guy comes up to me and says [blah blah]...

Note that (as in my example) this usage is particularly associated with casual / dialectal / non-standard speech, but can also occur in highly-polished literary contexts too (adding "immediacy").

The specific cited example is clumsily-constructed though. The initial adverbial element dating back when would be completely unacceptable to the vast majority of native speakers. It means [ever] since - which feasibly could be validly written as dating back to when, but personally I'd much prefer back from when).

There's also confusion regarding whether the word dating should be there at all. Whether or not it's present significantly affects the meaning (with = #1 below, without = #2). Discarding irrelevant details and simplifying things, the two most obvious possible meanings are...

1: Ever since I was a child I have wanted my Dad to buy me a Gameboy.
2: Back when I was a child I wanted my Dad to buy me a Gameboy.

(Note that in both cases, always could reasonably be included before wanted.)

Turning to OP's specific adverbial clause telling to my dad [what I told him], this would more naturally be phrased as saying to my Dad. It could feasibly be added before the period in both my two shortened versions above. With #1, it specifies what I have always done [and am still doing], whereas with #2 it's something I did (in the past, but not now).

I don't know which exact meaning (#1 / #2 above, or something completely different) OP intends, so it's not really worth me trying to rephrase it to a more "natural" form. But it doesn't have much to do with "historical present" as a grammatical concept. OP's cited example is just a continuous form (telling) in an optional adverbial clause. No different to, say,...

He walked/walks/will walk home, thinking deep thoughts

...where obviously the "continuous" adverbial thinking clause applies to past, present, or future action.

Improve this answer
2
  • Hello, I was so sick in the past 2 days that's why I can't make any reply even though I wanted to. What is OP by the way? That's all I wanted to ask and I undertand your #1 and #2 examples, which are the best thing to do to sound more natural and avoid awkwardness right.
    – John Arvin
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 21:33
  • 1
    It's not easy to explain exactly why, but I don't think to tend to [do something] is really suitable for your context. It means you were inclined to, but I'd have to say including it in something like Back when I was a child I tended to want my Dad to buy me toys sounds a bit "odd". A more natural / colloquial phrasing for that one would be Back when I was a child I used to want my Dad to buy me toys - where used to could imply repeated / habitual action (frequently asking for toys), as opposed to describing to a continuous state of desire with Simple Past.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 15:58

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .