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English doubts.. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| daniel-italia Diglot Newbie Italy danielfavento.it Joined 5567 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Romanian | Message 1 of 5 06 September 2009 at 11:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi everyone!!
I'm just a little bit ashamed to write here after seeing that everyone (but me) can speak more or less 8 languages!!! What a envy... Unfortunately I have even problems with English!! And this is the first of several doubts that come to me every day.. "I've had this book for three years.." Let's suppose this book was mine many years ago and it's not mine since a long time.. So we have an "action" begun in the past and finished in the past too.. but generally we use the present perfect for actions connected with the present.. Do I have to use the present perfect because of the word "for"? please help me!!! Edited by daniel-italia on 06 September 2009 at 4:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5917 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 5 06 September 2009 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Welcome to the forum :-) And we're not all fluent in a ton of languages, so don't worry.
"For three years" just describes the length of time you had the book, whether you still have it or not doesn't matter in that part of the sentence. What matters is the verbal tense in the beginning. (And in your example I would want to change 'this' if you no longer have it.) So: "I've had this book for three years" = I got the book three years ago and I still have it. "I had it for three years" = I got the book at a certain point, it was in my possession for three years, and then I lost/sold (?) it. This says nothing about how long ago this happened. Hope that makes sense. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daniel-italia Diglot Newbie Italy danielfavento.it Joined 5567 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Romanian | Message 3 of 5 06 September 2009 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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thank you very much Liz!!!
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| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6365 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 5 06 September 2009 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lizzern's answer is best to answer your question about the 3 years that you had the book, but some other "time terms":
"I had this book 10 years ago, but I don't have it now." ("ago" = tre anni fa) "I haven't had this book for 10 years." "I haven't had this book since 2006." (Eagles, Hotel California: "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.")
Well, don't be ashamed, I only know 1 1/4 languages. ;-)
Many French, Spanish, and Italian ("dubbio"?) speakers seem to use "a doubt" = "a question," but we do not use "doubt" this way in English. "I have several questions" would be better understood in English than "several doubts." We had a discussion about that in this forum "a while ago." Edited by TerryW on 07 September 2009 at 12:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daniel-italia Diglot Newbie Italy danielfavento.it Joined 5567 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Romanian | Message 5 of 5 07 September 2009 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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thanks a lot Terry!! What language do you know 1/4? Italian perhaps?
bye! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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