Mots Maudits #2.0: The Present Perfect

In my first blog series on troublesome words, I mainly addressed issues encountered by translators; I wanted to discuss context dependency and specific terms that are hard to translate because of their cultural specificity. In this second series, I want to look at common problems for people learning English as a second language (ESL).

The first case I want to discuss is the present perfect, which is a useful grammatical construction that is employed to talk past events that have consequences in the present. It is composed of the present tense of the verb “to have” (known as the auxiliary) and the past participle of the main verb. For example, “I have lived in Paris for 20 years.”

The difficulty for French-speaking ESL learners is that there is no direct equivalent in French for the specific nuances conveyed by the English present perfect tense. Moreover, its construction is the same as the French passé composé, but it is not always used in the same way. This means that its subtleties can be hard to grasp. For example, if you translate the sentence back to French using the passé compose, it would be “j’ai habité à Paris pendant 20 ans,” which implies that you no longer live in Paris, whereas “I have lived in Paris for 20 years” implies that you still live there…

So, how would you express the same idea in French? To say, “I have lived in Paris for 20 years” in French you would say “J'habite à Paris depuis 20 ans” or “Ça fait 20 ans que j'habite à Paris." In both cases, the verb “habiter”(to live) takes the present tense form; it is combined with a preposition in the first case (“depuis”, which translates to “since” or “for” in English), and in the second case, it is combined with an idiomatic expression (“Ça fait ... que”) that provides an alternative way to indicate the duration of an ongoing action. But that’s enough reverse-engineering English grammar…

The problem for French ESL learners is often to know when to use the simple past tense and when to use the present perfect; you cannot rely on your intuitions based on your knowledge of French grammar. Let’s look at a few more examples:

· "I have read that book three times": Here, the focus is on the fact that the action has been repeated, which may be relevant to the conversation you are having (i.e. you want to convey the idea that you love the book, or that you are very familiar with it). You would only use the past simple if you want to specify when you read it, e.g. "I read that book when I was a kid."

· "I have been to New York": Again, this statement implies that the experience of having been to New York is relevant to the present conversation. You might say it in answer to a question like "have you ever been to New York?" The present perfect conveys the idea that you went at some point in the past, but the focus is not on when. If you are talking about a specific trip at a specific point in time, you would use the past simple: "I went to New York in 2005."

· "I have lost my keys": In this example, the action happened in the past, but the result (not having the keys) is important now — the implication is that you are probably looking for them. If you say, "I lost my keys," you have probably resigned yourself to the fact that you won’t be able to find them!

· "I have worked here for five years": In this example, the connection to the present is fairly straightforward — this phrase implies that you still work there. "I worked here for five years,” means it is no longer your place of work.    

In many of these examples, in French you might use the passé composé to express the same idea, so there is potential for confusion. The main things that ESL learners need to remember when using the present perfect are:

1) The present perfect is formed with “have + past participle of the verb.”

2) The present perfect is used to connect past experiences or events to the present.

3)  If in doubt, ask yourself “Was the action completed at a specific point in the past?” If the answer is “yes,” then the simple past is probably a better choice of tense.