Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 06:04:08 +0100: Joachim Pense
<spam-collector@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

>> In discussion, I was told (there were three Germans around) that the
>> preterite sounded formal or archaic;
>
>In spoken language it does.

Does it?

"Ich saß in der Kneipe und war am Kaffee trinken, als ich plötzlich
mein Freund hereinkommen sah. Er grüßte mich und ich ihm. Er kam auf
mich hin, und erzählte ...usw. usw. ".

(I'm not a native speaker, so this may be full of mistakes. PCMIIW).
Lots of prerites around here, neither of which can be replaced with a
perfect. Is there any kind of German where you'd use a perfect ("ich
hab' .. gesessen ...") is a story like this?

>I guess he took that from his Latin lessons or something like that. Most
>German I know could not tell a semantic difference between preterite and
>perfect.

But that doesn't at all mean they are exchangable.

>I think today the difference between the tenses in German is only the
>register.

I don't.

> (I know fairy tale books for children that tell their stories in
> the perfect instead of the preterite - to sound more child-like)

Nicht "es war einmal" sondern "es ist einmal gewesen"????? I can
hardly believe that. Perhaps I misunderstand the terms "perfect" and
"preterite"?

For Dutch, cf.
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~ans/e-ans/02/04/body.html
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~ans/e-ans/02/04/08/body.html
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~ans/e-ans/02/04/08/04/body.html
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~ans/e-ans/02/04/08/07/body.html
http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~ans/e-ans/02/04/08/04/02/body.html

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com

.

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