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Present perfect /present perfect continou | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 4178 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English | Message 1 of 30 29 January 2014 at 11:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi !
Please can someone tells me me what the difference is between : ex1 I have worked in London for a long time . ex2 I have been working in London for a long time . 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4324 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 2 of 30 29 January 2014 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If I'm not mistaken, both are equivalent. You can use both Present Perfect or Present
Perfect Continuous to narrate an event that begins in the past and continues until the present. The Present Perfect Continuous is used exclusively with this purpose, while the Present Perfect has other uses too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 30 29 January 2014 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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ex1 could mean:
I worked in London for a long time, but now I work in Paris. ex2 includes the meaning, "and I'm still working in London". The context should make it clear, but they don't necessarily mean the same thing. If one is talking to someone in the office in London, and it's clear they work in London, they might use ex1, and in that case, they would mean the same. Edited by luke on 29 January 2014 at 3:38pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 4 of 30 29 January 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ex. 2 makes clear that you're still working in London, while Ex. 1 merely states the fact that you have worked in London at some point of your life.
EDIT: Oops, luke answered the question a minute before me. Well, never mind! Edited by Josquin on 29 January 2014 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 4178 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English | Message 5 of 30 29 January 2014 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's what i believe . French English teachers always tell us that when you use the Present Perfect Simple it means the action has started in the past and is still continuing in the present , then again the Present Perfect continuous discribes the same action , started in the past and continuing in the present . I know in the current language using one or the other wouldn't make any difference , but in an academic context we have to use strickly correct grammatical forms , using one instead of the other would not mean the same thing . By the way in the Internet i have found a mnenomic way to use the right tense in context , the JEANY way . You use Present perfect simple with JEANY = Just+Ever+Never+Yet You use strickly Present Perfect Continous with = For+Since + How long . Is it that simple ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 4178 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English | Message 6 of 30 29 January 2014 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
But i would use the simple past in that case .!? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 30 29 January 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm having trouble coming up with any context where the two examples are not equivalent. If I no longer worked in London I'd say: I worked in London for a long time (as another post suggests). In both of the original sentences I'm still working in London at the time that I make the statement. BTW: I assume "discribes" is a typo for "describes" but "strickly" looks like a genuine mistake (you meant to use "strictly"). I also note that you quite consistently place spaces around your punctuation:
I was taught in school that you have no space before the punctuation and once space after it (although I was told by a typist that she was required to leave TWO spaces after punctuation. That, however, was in the days of mechanical typewriters). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4519 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 8 of 30 29 January 2014 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
No, you would use the simple past if the actual point in time is important, but present perfect to state that you have worked there, no matter when that was. Well, this is a simplification of the problem. Even though English has so many tense/aspect combinations, they don't have a single unique meaning. It's complicated to learn all the rules, mass input is more efficient in order to get the right feeling. edit: The JEANY thing is just a rule of thumb. It often works, but the right tense doesn't depend on a specific keyword, but on the meaning you want to convey. There can be found counterexamples for all those keywords... Edited by daegga on 29 January 2014 at 3:38pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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