http://www.englishforums.com/English/GeneralEnglishGrammarQuestions/Forum12.htmAsk your questions on grammar and get your sentence checked. We answer lots of different types of general English grammar questions here.enCSMOD (Build: 3273.32735)http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkqn/post.htm#543605Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:38:43 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:543605Grammar Geek0http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkqn/post.htm#543605http://www.englishforums.com/English/comments12-543605.xml<p>As&nbsp;an American speaker, I think I&#39;d use the present perfect.</p> <p>Barb, come me Joe.<br />Oh, we&#39;ve met. Nice to see you again Joe.</p> <p>If you come to the party, you can meet Barb.<br />We&#39;ve met before, but it will be nice to see her again.</p> <p>On the other hand: We <em>first met </em>in Paris. The Germans wore grey. You wore blue.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div>http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkqm/post.htm#543604Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:33:29 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:543604Mr Wordy1http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkqm/post.htm#543604http://www.englishforums.com/English/comments12-543604.xml<p>It&#39;s the same deal for &quot;met&quot; and &quot;heard&quot;, so to keep it simple I&#39;ll just use &quot;met&quot; in the examples.&nbsp;</p> <p>&quot;I met him&quot; means that I&#39;m talking about a specific time in the past when I met him</p> <p>&quot;I have met him&quot; means that I&#39;ve met him on one or more occasions on the past. It&#39;s not important when those occasions were; all I&#39;m trying to get across is that I have met him at&nbsp;some time.</p> <p>However,&nbsp;if the word &quot;before&quot; is added, and the sentence ends there, then this often implies the second meaning (because &quot;before&quot; itself often means &quot;at some time(s) in the past&quot;).&nbsp;I would therefore usually say&nbsp;&quot;I <strong>have</strong> met him before&quot; to avoid an inconsistency between the tense and the word &quot;before&quot;. But other speakers may not agree with this, and so you might well hear &quot;I met him before&quot;. I get the impression that the latter form might be more common in American English, but a native American English speaker would need to confirm that.&nbsp;An additional complication, though, is that&nbsp;&quot;before&quot; can also be used to mean &quot;recently&quot;, or &quot;a little while ago&quot;. In this case I would not use &quot;have&quot;. For example, if I was introduced to a visitor for&nbsp;a second time&nbsp;then I&nbsp;might say &quot;I met him before&quot;.</p> <p>If &quot;before&quot; is followed by a time reference then &quot;have&quot; is normally not used. For example, &quot;I met him before I joined&quot;, not &quot;I have met him before I joined.&quot;</p><div style="clear:both;"></div>http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkxw/post.htmSat, 19 Jul 2008 15:21:42 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:543566Viceidol2http://www.englishforums.com/English/Default/gwkxw/post.htmhttp://www.englishforums.com/English/comments12-543566.xml<p>Hello, everyone:</p> <p>One of my grammar book says:</p> <p><em>&nbsp;I <strong><font color="#3366ff">have met</font></strong> him before</em>.=<em>I <font color="#ff6600"><strong>met</strong></font> him before.</em></p> <p><em>I <strong><font color="#3366ff">have heard</font></strong> it before. = I <font color="#ff6600"><strong>heard</strong></font> it before.</em></p> <p>Is that really true? Thank you for your reply.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div>