"If you knew what I had gone through, you would surely pity me." Don't listen to these people. You can change it to "have" because only the first verb has to be in the subjunctive mood. The verb "knew" is

Part of the English learning is to develop a sense when to use the proper tense for the context you have in mind. Most people we come across in our everyday life probably don't give too much emphasis in past perfect in conversation to

Hey Renan, I can just tell you that some Americans DO use the simple past with already, yet, ever/never. I clearly remember a post in the pronunciation section where there was a video from the TV series Lost, and a guy asked a girl "Did you

The problem might be the verb "broadcast." The past form can be "broadcasted" or "broadcast". I am American and most often use the first form. In England or other English-speaking places, you might hear the other

Hi, Should a person use a present perfect tense here? How about a past tense? Yes, use Simple Past. 'I have driven' does not fit with 'one year ago'. (two people talking in Tokyo, Japan) A: Oh, you look like you need to brush up

I think (a) would only be used in a narrative. "She had been depressed during the campaign. It had seemed that she would surely lose. But now her spirits were high. Now she was the president elect." We're talking about a past time,

When I want to tell a story in English, I need to use the past tenses. First of all, I can use the simple past tense and start the story like this: When I opened the door I had seen/ saw a man on his knees.. The first sentence is very important

Nice question. I once drove me mad for a while, LOL. What I learned is that you need to use either the present perfect or the past perfect, although it is very idiomatic to use the simple past instead of the past perfect. I am talking to you

French, like English, has both a simple past and a present perfect, but the simple past is falling into disuse. ... the present perfect, and now that that paraphrase has become the norm it's been given the label of "compound past". I

But you're not alone in that; 99.99% of native English speakers couldn't explain to you the difference between simple past and present perfect (the other .01% probably spent a gap-year teaching English). I've tried this by asking