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From an ESL textbook.

Write about something you accomplished : What did you accomplish ? How long had you been preparing for it ?
How had you been preparing ?

I don't know why it sounds weird to me. :( ??

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  • Let's try a couple of simpler sentences, and see if you still think it's weird: How tall is he? How long have you been sitting here? She'd lived there for three years by 1986.
    – Damkerng T.
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 4:54
  • Your examples don't sound weird. I'm very sorry but I don't get what you want to say ?
    – Ascendant
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 9:17

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I don't see any sense in a single question in past perfect. Past perfect is used in reference to another statement in the past, expressing a chronological order. The statement in Past Perfect concerns something that was before the statement in Past Tense:

  • Last year we were on holiday in Italy. The year before we had been in Greece.
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It should not sound weird to you. If it does it might be because you don't see this structure very frequently. This is the past perfect and it is only used for a very specific situation. It's a past tense about something that happened before something else previously mentioned.

  1. Something you accomplished (past)
  2. Preparations for the accomplishment (happened before that)

Other Latin languages such as Spanish and French have exactly the same structure.

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  • Yes, there is the past perfect for a reason and people use it all the time. However, is it normal to use it in a question in the English language, not Spanish or French ?
    – Ascendant
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 9:19
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In my opinion there's no an overuse of past perfect here, like in the link I provided:

NOTE

The most common mistake with the past perfect is to overuse it or to use it simply because we are talking about a time in the distant past.

The Romans had spoken Latin.

Remember that we only use the past perfect when we want to refer to a past that is earlier than another time in the narrative.

In our particular case there are two different past event sequences. However this can be transformed in two different past event sequences using simple past:

What did you accomplish ? How long did you prepare for it ? How did you prepare ?

or to make it clearer we can use the adverb before:

What did you accomplish ? How long did you prepare for it before? How did you prepare before?

This said the use of either past perfect or past simple, in my opinion, depends on laying emphasis, focusing, style, etc. though there might be cases (too many different past event sequences) when the use of past perfect becomes compulsory.

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  • Did you mean to say there is an overuse of past perfect or there is no overuse of past perfect ?
    – Ascendant
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 9:15
  • I'm sorry but if you look closer you will find "In my opinion there's no an overuse"
    – Ascendant
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 11:13
  • Yes I did. First, there is "there's no an overuse". Second, you quoted that the most common mistake with the past perfect is to overuse it. Finally, you said that it depends. I'm sorry but I got confused.
    – Ascendant
    Commented May 31, 2015 at 11:30

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