Talk:Past tense

message: I'm a speaker of Dutch and I was surprised to read about two tenses I had never heard about before. Convoluted verlaine tied and Voltaire coordinated tied are two tenses not only unknown to me, the names of the tenses are not even Dutch words. Nor are the examples you give. Registered was i dear should be Gisteren was ik daar and better Ik ben daar gisteren geweest.
In Dutch the Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd (O.V.T.) (~simple past) is used to express an event prior to the moment of speaking, but without emphasis on whether the event is completely over or not. It is often used with time adverbials expressing frequency or duration (all day long; when I was younger I went fishing once a week.). The Voltooid Verleden Tijd (V.V.T.) (~present perfect) is used in the same grammatical context (to express an event prior to the moment of speaking), but here the emphasis lies on the event being completed or completed and with present consequences. it is often used with time adverbials expressing a time when something happened (yesterday, ...).
Note that the present perfect can't be used with time adverbials like yesterday, but the V.V.T. can.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.37.197 (talk) 18:51, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Dutch

message: The article should mention the phenomenon of irregular verbs and should make a distinction between dynamic and static verbs when describing the different functions. Otherwise, nice overview. --Sinatra 14:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Irregular and dynamic/static

message: From the article: "Simple past is used for describing acts that have already been secluded"
I'm not familiar with any meaning of "secluded" that would make sense in the above sentence. Is "secluded" a technical term, or is its use in the above sentence a mistake? --72.78.101.61 22:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Secluded"? 

message: Even if this is English only, there are paragraphs at Imperfect tense#English and Pluperfect#Examples from various languages suggesting this may be incomplete, and even is this article is based on an "English only has two/three 
tenses" POV it should have pointers to other approaches.  It is seriously lacking when considering past tenses in other languages.  --Henrygb 18:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: English only

message: I have been editing the article on Charles Ives but certain passages of the article use a tense that I'm not sure what to call. Maybe a past progessive tense-but instead of 'was' it uses 'would' Here is a quote :
"Starting around 1910 Ives would begin composing his most accomplished works including the "Holidays Symphony" and arguably his best-known piece "Three Places in New England". Ives' mature works of this era would eventually compare with the two other great musical innovators at the time (Schoenberg and Stravinsky) making the case that Ives was the 3rd great innovator of early 20th century composition. Arnold Schoenberg himself would compose a brief poem near the end of his life honoring Ives."
I think the tense used in the Ive's article makes the article more wordy than neccesary but I am curious to know what it is as it doesn't seem to be mentioned here. Anybody know? --Godfinger 21:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I came here to ask precisely the same sort of question.  This edit was described as changing passive voice to active, but it has nothing to do with voice.  It's just changing "she would play" etc to "she played".  What's the "would play" version of the past tense called?  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: He would do this, he would do that

message: The article currently uses "kam" as an example of the use of the preterite with focus on the action (as opposed to the resulting present state). This is a specific feature of "kommen" and a few other verbs with short (mono-syllabic?) irregular preterite forms (e.g "stand" is also in common use), but "normal" verbs can't be used like this in speech, e.g. "Ich hab(e) heute morgen Getränke geholt", and not "*Ich holte heute morgen Getränke", even when focussing on the action. I'm a bit wary of changing this because the article makes a lot of regional distinctions, but I think I would have noticed by now if some people in Germany spoke like this :-) (See also Preterite#German) Joriki (talk) 14:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading description of German preterite? 

message: This paragraph makes no sense: "The Past Future Perfect Continuous tenses is used express based on these events : would, have, still going in the future , and the past" Harry Audus (talk) 00:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  English