Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe

Ruud Harmsen wrote: 
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 

Decidedly northern. I think many southerners would cringe at this.

und war am Kaffee trinken,

Okay. The verb "sein" (like some other high-frequency verbs) has retained its preterite even in most dialects that otherwise strongly prefer the perfect, AFAIK. However, the "progressive" construction ("am VInf sein") is probably itself a north-western regionalism, at least it's often described as "Rheinische Verlaufsform".

als ich plötzlich mein Freund hereinkommen sah. 
                    ^   en

Less likely, to my feeling. Actually, I'd agree there is in fact a tendency among users of the preterite to prefer it in backgrounding situations. So, in a sense, there might in fact be a tendency to use the preterite as an imperfective in the aspectual sense, although that's certainly not a hard-and-fast rule. That's why I find it much more natural in the first sentence.

Er grüßte mich und ich ihm. Er kam auf
mich hin, und erzählte ...usw. usw. ".

Same as above, I don't think that would be very common, not even among the heavy preterite users here in Hamburg.

(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. 

Those in the second sentence most definitely could.

> Is there any kind of German where you'd use a perfect ("ich
hab' .. gesessen ...") is a story like this? 

Yes.

Lukas
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe
    ... Is there any kind of German where you'd use a perfect ("ich ... If I'd tell this story to a friend, I'd replace every preterite of the ... would have to be replaced by the more formal "ich trank gerade Kaffee". ...
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