Answer Question
Present perfect in place of preterite in Spain
My 12 yr old daughter is going at a pace of a lesson a day, now on Level 2, lesson 18, so it's a race to fluency by our summer trip to Spain.
One thing I've not seen (in skipping ahead) is present perfect tense, which seems to be replacing preterite with Spaniards in day-to-day speech. I did not go through every lesson, but I was surprised to not see perfect tense used in the last couple lessons, so I wondered.
My wife is from Northern Spain and I thought it was just her until meeting other Spaniards and visiting Spain a few times.
In some ways, its easier to learn the perfect tense, since the conjugation is always the same. Thoughts? I mean my daughter will learn Perfect from us or relatives, but it does seem a huge part of the way Spanish is commonly spoken there.
Example: instead of saying "we ate" comimos, they almost exclusively say "we've eaten" hemos comido.
One thing I've not seen (in skipping ahead) is present perfect tense, which seems to be replacing preterite with Spaniards in day-to-day speech. I did not go through every lesson, but I was surprised to not see perfect tense used in the last couple lessons, so I wondered.
My wife is from Northern Spain and I thought it was just her until meeting other Spaniards and visiting Spain a few times.
In some ways, its easier to learn the perfect tense, since the conjugation is always the same. Thoughts? I mean my daughter will learn Perfect from us or relatives, but it does seem a huge part of the way Spanish is commonly spoken there.
Example: instead of saying "we ate" comimos, they almost exclusively say "we've eaten" hemos comido.