this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Privacy
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I have some more questions, teacher
If I lived in a country for some years/time, how do I say that?
Also, if I worked as somebody?
And in general, difference between have been and had been?
Thank you
I'll answer this because the two previous questions depend on what you want to express. Just a note before-hand, the best site for English grammar I know is ego4u.
First the quick answer:
Longer answer:
Conceptually, there are a limited number of possible tenses. Here is a picture from ego4u
Let's say you want to tell a story. There are the static states you can describe
So, now that we've expressed a state, something that is unchanging, we would like to describe changing actions are particular strips in time:
Alright, we have expressed points in time both static and changing, but what about actions that happen just before those points in time? They concluded or may be still happening. We call those "perfect" tenses.
And finally, if we look at the diagram we see one last group of progressives - perfect progressive. Remember, progressive describe something that's still ongoing at the point in time. You may ask why they are needed when the "perfect" overlaps with the progressive - something that started before a point in time and continues to happen.
Well, that difference might be lost with time as they tend to become less and less important. A grammar purist might disagree but in colloquial English, my experience shows less and less people can tell the difference and I do have to look it up:
The difference between "perfect" and "perfect progressive" is the focus of the tense. "Perfect" makes the result important and "perfect progressive" makes the duration or fluidity / continuity of the action important. I invite you to read this page on Present Perfect Simple vs Present Perfect Progressive. It explains it quite well.
Hopefully that will help you answer your two first questions.
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Just a random person on the internet asked you to explain something, and you did, you're so cool
Thank you for the explanation, I will really remember and keep it for my whole life
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(No sarcasm, really, people these days are so mean and tell you to look everything up yourself, or just get angry because you ask or don't know. Even though you could just copy and paste, this is a human interaction. Really happy to see somebody's still alive)
Hey, I'm glad the effort was appreciated 😇 Have yourself a great day!