ceigered:2) Your derogatory implications in the usage of the world "colonial" are infuriating to say the least.

Ceigered, just ignore those kinds of remarks from Sudanglo. Erin has told me off for using the dreadfully offensive word 'silly', but I suspect that Sudanglo would accept that he was being exactly that!

Oh, for crying out loud. Can't we just all agree that American English is the current world standard, whose usage patterns solely determine what is and is not correct? It would just make things so much simpler for everyone.

No?

Rats.

sudanglo:

And 'Li diris, ke li estis hejme.' would be 'He said he has been at home

Unfortunately Robinast, the rules of English don't allow you to say that.

If the 'diris' is to be 'said' then you can say 'he had been at home' or 'he was at home'. The pastness of 'said' has an influence on the subclause and requires a past form in the subclause.

The heated debate between Sudanglo and Ceigered seems to be just a misunderstanding.

Ceigered is absolutely right when he says that it is possible to say:

"He said that he has been at home"

- but this is only possible if the situation hasn't changed, and the person who said that is still at home right now at the time of speaking. Which is pretty much how Ceigered explained it as far as I can remember.

The only problem is that the Esperanto sentence that was given cannot be translated as such.

"Li diris, ke li estis hejme."

- the person said, 'Mi estIs hejme' (= I was at home). So, the person is no longer at home, meaning that the situation has changed. Therefore it is not possible to say in this case: "He said that he has been at home" (which would suggest that the person has been at home the whole time, from the point in the past up to the moment of speech.)

----

As it stands 'Li diris, ke li estis hejme' should be translated as: "He said he had been at home" ('was' shifts to 'had been').

Sudanglo mentioned another possible translation for this: "He said he was at home". Now, if you just see that cold, with no other information, the natural assumption would be that he actually said, "I am at home" ('am' shifting back to 'was'). But in certain circumstances, you could use the form Sudanglo suggested:

- A policeman interviews a suspect. "Where were you last Sunday?" "I was at home". The policeman then reports to his boss: "He said he was at home on Sunday" (the fact that the suspect 'was at home' has not changed, the situation has remained the same, there's a link with the present).

However in other cases, where the situation has clearly changed and the event is now very much in the past, you really do have to shift the tense one back:

Last Friday he said, "I am going to the cinema this evening"

= "Last Friday he said that he WAS going to the cinema." (it's clearly relevant only to the past, his intention as represented by 'going to' relates only to last Friday)

Hope that made some sense. I'm sure I could have explained that more concisely!

sudanglo:

And 'Li diris, ke li estis hejme.' would be 'He said he has been at home

Unfortunately Robinast, the rules of English don't allow you to say that.

It was obviously that statement that led to the confusion. The rules of English *do* allow such a sentence as suggested by Robinast. It's just that it's the wrong translation for the Esperanto sentence.

Imagine such a sentence:

Li diris, "Mi estas hejme jam dum du tagoj"

= Li diris, ke li estas hejme jam dum du tagoj

Now imagine that the person has just told you that in person and you have just left his house. So you know that he is still in the house! You then report to someone else about his whereabouts:

"He said that that has been at home for two days"

RiotNrrd:Oh, for crying out loud. Can't we just all agree that American English is the current world standard, whose usage patterns solely determine what is and is not correct? It would just make things so much simpler for everyone.

No?

Rats.

Whoah... In hindsight I feel like a fool now for harping on so much about that, without paying enough attention to the very first sentence. No wonder I felt like something critical was missing Sorry guys, and thanks Chainy for going back through to that.

@ Riot,
To be perfectly honest, while the influence of US English can be worrying (I keep writing -ing as -ed this week!) when it's not restrained, it's surely convenient having almost a 3-way dialect system between British, US and Commonwealth English, it prevents things from being so polarised as they possibly could IMHO

One of the educational advantages in the study of Esperanto, not sufficiently often mentioned in our propaganda, is the way that it develops insights into the way ones mother tongue works.

I suspect that this comes into play at a much earlier stage than it would in learning a foreign national language because with a foreign national language so much time is devoted to learning the basics, that only much later is one in a position to handle the subtleties of a more precise expression of meaning.

I notice, Chainy, how to try to make the sentence sound natural, in your doorstep reporting example, you brought in an adjunct type expression to suggest that the concern was with the present situation.

And, sometimes the subject matter is enough to demonstrate this concern without an appropriate adjunct - as in 'Who told you she speaks French'.

Nevertheless, and regardless of translation issues, I would still maintain that the bald assertion 'He said he has been at home' is not good English.

Hearing this from a non-native speaker in one of my TEFL classes would certainly have lead to a discussion of tense usage in English.

Chainy:It's just that most of us have never analysed our own grammar in fine detail, or even had to, so it's quite a headache when you suddenly try to make some sense of it!

Amen to that! We often don't think much about what we're saying or how we say it, we just follow the patterns that we've learned. It's kind of like walking. You've done it since a very early age and do it naturally. If you start thinking too much about where and how you're going to place each foot for each step, you find yourself stumbling all over the place.

sudanglo:Nevertheless, and regardless of translation issues, I would still maintain that the bald assertion 'He said he has been at home' is not good English.

Hearing this from a non-native speaker in one of my TEFL classes would certainly have lead to a discussion of tense usage in English.

Wouldn't that be unfair on the learner though, effectively teaching them that English is a rigid and unflexible language? (Which some grammarians want us to think, despite how purely prescriptive that can be).

I know not one person in real life who speaks so rigidly, put it that way. I know HEAPS who write using just that way and no with "have ___" flavouring (and they should, since in writing we're mostly reporting an account), but I don't know anyone who speaks the language using only one of those methods exclusively (telling a story about long past events would sound strange with "have", and talking about current or near current events with "had" sounds wrong to my Gen-Z ears).

But at least your students should be able to write killer essays in English

Wouldn't that be unfair on the learner though

Definitely not, Ceiger

A significant source of foreign learners errors in English is the failure to apprehend the character of the Present Perfect in English.

I think that the issue of why you should avoid 'He said that he has been home' is wider than any rules about tense-shifting.

Essentially the Present Perfect in English means before now, without any specific time reference (more technically in a time period that extends to the present)

This is why 'I have seen him yesterday' is not good English.