The Past Perfect Tense

[gnasher1001]

My friend had said she,

[gnasher1001]

My friend wants to marry you

[DeMarkieSade]

"She'd had many bad jobs in the past, but her new job is okay."

This would be mixing the past perfect tense with the simple present, would it not?

"She's had many bad jobs in the past but her new job is okay."

This would be both a present perfect and simple present tense?

"She'd had many bad jobs in the past, but her new job was okay."

In each clause, the tenses must match.

Paul, you should do a video on verb tense agreement.

[naj5554]

i hadn't understood this lesson before i saw this video

thanks

[pony85]

THANK YOU ... YOU ARE THE BEST !!!

[jacasforever]

thank you

[poplikem]

thank you for the lessons



[eddit11]

you are great



[buggsmalone]

public schools and majorly in question these days.

how many buildings fell on 911?

cool shirt.

[Finalforce100]

Thanks

[realjuvelive]

Thanks!

[loktin948]

Should we talk about 2 things to use past perfert ???

[cyclone100100]

Hi thank you for the lessons. I have learnt so many things from you. I have got one question. If I say, I lived in so many places before I moved to this place, would the sentence be correct? please reply.

[learnamericanenglish]

@cyclone100100 - Hi. You can say "I have lived in many places..." or "I lived in many places..." Take a look at my video lesson on the present perfect tense. That might help you. Paul

[cyclone100100]

Hi thank you for the lessons. I have learnt so many things from you. I have got one question. If I say, I lived in so many places before I moved to this place, would the sentence be correct? please reply.

[igadayn]

I am a teacher. My students find no difficulty to understand this tense. i just make them memorize that the older verb is conjugated in the past perfect and the the newer verb in the simple past.

for example: I told my students that I had graduated from Qadi ayyad university in Marrakesh.

[potentperson]

"She'd had many bad jobs in the past, but her new job was okay"

I'm not sure if that's correct. Wouldn't you say her new job WAS okay? or else change the tense and say "She's had many bad jobs in the past, but her new job is okay". Please let me know what you think!

[learnamericanenglish]

Yes, you're right. I'll have to look at the video again.

"Her new job is okay," is better for that particular example. "Her new job was okay," is not impossible, but it could be confusing for some people.

Thanks for alerting me to this.

[potentperson]

Your vids are great, by the way. Really useful stuff, excellent delivery

[davidstighansen]

@potentperson She'd had many bad jobs but her LAST one was ok.  It depends if she still has the job. The first example describes a situation where she is currently unemployed. "She'd had many bad jobs in the past, but her new job was okay"

[potentperson]

@davidstighansen Sorry, I made a mistake in my original comment, by not making a mistake lol. The video says "she'D HAD many bad jobs in the past, but her new job IS okay". How can you mix past perfect and present simple? Surely you want she has had + new job is ...OR... she had had + new job was? I'd love to hear back from you - I'm not trying to pick a fight, I promise! :)

[gitsferrari]

@potentperson Sent from an alternative account since I WAS BLOCKED "you have been blocked by the owner of this video." If you wanna picka fight, start by apologizing for your mistakes and then tell me how you'd love to hear back from me. I'm not sure if I should flame you with ring-around-you-running-logic,­ or by sending you a cake. Just watch yourself.

[potentperson]

@gitsferrari I said I DON'T wanna picka fight fool. I am trying to get to the bottom of the issue. I am seriously asking if there's a mistake in the video or not - I would like to know the answer. Is that wrong of me?

[gitsferrari]

@potentperson I'm sorry, I thought you had a sense of humor. Everyone is so serious in these ESL comments.

[GundulaGause007]

jah cool ich lern englisch :)

I had not gone to the cinema yesterday.

[learnamericanenglish]

Wie geht's?

Most Americans don't use the word "cinema." It sounds too artsy, but you can use it if you want to.

Here's an example with "go":

Before the age of ten, I had never gone to see a movie in a movie theater.

[potentperson]

In England we use cinema all the time. Talking about movies or movie theatres sounds odd to me as a British person, however, it's the opposite in the US

[MrFreedy12]

this video is very gud.. frm pakistan

[catirinabengala]

Your explanations are perfect.,specially to foreign persons or beginners. Thanks so much!

[RealCars1]

you are the best im kazakhstan

[JaikeKun]

thank you so much teacher for post this video .

Jaike , Peru

[manolitomulat]

im glad i found this ..a big help for me.. im manolito from the philippines

[RanSawyer44]

thanks teacher for the tutorials, but i couldn't understand what is the main purpose of the past perfect. I repeated it many times i'm still confused.

what is the difference between the past tense and the past perfect. :)

my name is Rawan from Arabia

[learnamericanenglish]

Hi Rawan,

The past perfect is used to describe an action that happened before another past action:

She had lived in California for ten years before she moved to Seattle. (the first past action = live; the second past action = move)

I had never visited Riyadh until last year.

("visit" is the past action, completed. Last year is also entirely in the past)

I have never visited London. (this is the present perfect and the truth expressed by this statement goes back to birth)

Paul

[RanSawyer44]

this is much better, thanks for the explanation ..

[sadikitah]

had you gone to USA?<---this is past perfect..

cause maybe you never been in USA.. or you may went to USA.!!

paste percect means something that you didnt do or maybe you did

the difference between past tense and past perfect.. is that in past perfect there is a mystery about if u did or u dint something

[controledinsanity]

In the sentence They had never been to New York, is Never Been a compound verb

[learnamericanenglish]

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I agree with you. I'll try to work that in. The volume is a problem, too. I'm using a built-in webcam.

[diego30178]

is it correct to use the past perfect in the same way as the past simple tense, in meaning?

[learnamericanenglish]

The meaning is slightly different. The past perfect is more precise and sometimes necessary when making conditional sentence or indirect quotations; however, most Americans don't know the difference, so if you just stick with the simple past tense, you'll be okay here.

Still--you should know the difference.

Paul

[anglissa]

This is the pluperfect tense, as far as I am aware

[learnamericanenglish]

Yes, you can call it that, but I don't know a single English teacher who does, nor do English grammar books refer to it as the pluperfect. Let's stick with "past perfect."

[mudassirhussain]

my understanding is that there are 2 events that occur in past, and therefore both events are written in past tense.

Eg. "They had eaten the whole pizza before I arrived"

But what about

She'd had many jobs in the past, but her new job is ok. Here the second event is in present tense ie, 'be' form is used.

Also could you tell me whats difference between sentance containing

'had had' and 'had'

[mudassirhussain]

why cant the example 'she'd had' could be just simple 'she had'

[ManoJow2]

ops, not before in the second sentence, but when.

[ManoJow2]

Hello there, what's the difference between saying:

"They had eaten the whole pizza before I arrived." from

"They had already eaten the whole pizza before I arrived."?

[learnamericanenglish]

Yes, it's okay to use the contraction--they'd. Many people don't use the contraction because it's hard to pronounce or they want to underscore the time relationship between the two events.

[learnamericanenglish]

Hi Swytek,

Perfect continuous and perfect tenses are, indeed, similar, but a continuous tense must logically be something that continues nonstop across time. For example, "I had been using that soap for years, but then I stopped using it when I found something better." It is possible to use the past perfect in this sentence, "had used," but the nature of the action seems to call for the continuous form. It's a little confusing, isn't it?

[Swytek]

Thank you for your response.

The horizontal line you draw on the board would be a good way to show how Past Perfect, Past Continuous, and Past Perfect Continuous differ time-wise.

[Swytek]

The website says Past Perfect Continuous is used to show an event that started in the past and stopped before another event in the past. That also sounds like Past Perfect. What's the difference?