Describing Past Perfect Tense while travelling to Australia
Hola from Canguroland! G’day, mate! In this episode you will learn about Past Perfect Tense, how to use it when talking about an event in the past together with Simple Past Tense and also when we use it with a Conditional Tense. I share some personal examples from my recent trip to Australia!! PS I recorded this episode at 4am in the morning!! Hope you enjoy it :)
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Hola chicos! Welcome to English Made Simple this is Episode 10 numero 10.
Hello hello how is everyone doing hola from Canguroland my name is Milena this is Episode 10 of English Made Simple number 1 podcast for Hispano Parlantes voted by me and my mum haha
Welcome I am recording this episode from Melbourne “Austraya” where people speak fast they abbreviate words and they greet you with G’day mate instead of saying Good Day mate hehe G’day mate!
So it’s 4 a.m. in the morning right now I feel a bit jet lag jet lag is a term in English that describes a feeling when you change time zones in Chile right now it should be 3pm in the afternoon and I should be having lunch and I’m here in Australia wide awake at 4 a.m. in the morning and everybody else is sleeping right. So completely confused myself with time zones well hello again from Australia I’m recording this from Melbourne, more specifically, it’s really cold here. I don’t know if you are you probably think Australia Sunshine place there is sun everywhere people are swimming people are blonde people are surfing everywhere well it’s not always the case is special in Melbourne where it rains and there is always really annoying wind everywhere people don’t go and see him everyday but you’re also probably thinking there are spiders (arañas) there’s snakes (serpientes) there’s sharks (tiburones) there kangaroos everywhere (en todo lado) yes they are everywhere usually the kangaroos are not in the city they are outside of the city they live in the suburbs the snakes and spiders yeah they are in the city there’s one …there is one really ugly, ugly spider living here in my neighborhood and it’s huge anyway let’s not talk about spiders right now hehe Anyway so I decided to record this episode To answer a few questions people have asked me about past perfect tense when do we use past perfect tense first of all people let me ask this question why do they call it perfect it’s not perfect right I don’t think it’s perfect to me it’s confusing it’s bloody confusing past confusing tense that’s what it should be called past confusing tense as far as I’m concerned….. Alright, Ok. City College past perfect tense perfect in this case means it relates to a time I finished time and action that’s finished to create a past perfect tense we have two words “had” that’s the past tense of HAVE so we need HAD and PARTICIPLE together and this is called past perfect tense.
OK I’m going to try to explain this in a fun fun kind of way I will you some of my personal examples the past perfect doesn’t always refer to an action that’s happened before a past event but it’s also used to express regret lamentar… regret…And also it’s used to express a third conditional sentences know this is a little bit too advanced but you can just use a simple example for that one so just to summarise there is three ways that we use past perfect tense. We use it together with simple past tense right we use it to express regret something we feel sorry about and we use it to talk about third conditional sentences ok I wish I have done this I wish I did something so here we go my first example now everyone knows I left Chile and I arrived in Melbourne. So I left Chile which in Spanish means Antes de irme de Chile. So you use a different tense when you say it but in English we say left which is the past tense to leave SALIR. Ok so I left Chile. But before I left Chile there were a few things that I had to do…. I had to pack my clothes I had to book my flight I had to buy gifts regalos I had to you know comprar regalos souvenirs and stuff like that. So the first action here is my example I left the Chile. Before I left Chile, I had booked my flight, I had packed my clothes, I had bought gifts I had bought souvenirs for my family I also realised I had forgotten to pack more gifts and that’s because I’m an idiot and that’s a different story right haha For this example I basically said that we can use past perfect tense together with a simple tense (simple past tense!) I left Chile so before I left Chile…it’s a simple (past) tense… before leaving Chile there were some actions that I had to do and that’s basically said in a past perfect tense format…
Another way to use the past perfect tense is to express regret lamentar…. I wish I had bought more gifts for my family before I left Chile… BOUGHT I assume we know it’s a Past Tense of to BUY right. it’s a participle. Bought it’s also a participle of to BUY (comprar)
OK so I have a great I feel sad because I didn’t buy enough gifts I wish I had bought more gifts for my family before I left chilly there we go there is another example of a past perfect tense if you think about a third conditional sentence an example of this would be I wouldn’t have forgotten to buy gifts if I had gone shopping early (temprano) so if I had gone shopping early I would buy more gifts, I would plan better So the sentence was it a conditional sentence I wouldn’t have forgotten to buy gifts if I had gone shopping early had gone is the past perfect in this case if I had gone shopping early I will write an article to explain past perfect in more detail because it’s easier if you look at a timeline of actions in the past and I will also give you more examples that you can relate to.
In the next episode we will talk about present perfect tense you will learn how to use Present Perfect. Talk about your experiences. Example: Have you ever been to Australia have you ever visited Australia this is a present perfect tense know I have never been to Australia thank you mean a lot thank you for making me really jealous for being in Australia right now just to make you jealous alright so I hope this made a little bit of sense now just remember this when we talked about past perfect tense we talk about a story that happened in the past write a story that happened in the past just think about that there is a series of events that take place before a final event (in the past). This is Past Perfect Tense. So maybe it’s easier if you read the article because sometimes it hard to listen and to imagine to explain the grammar so I tried my best to explain it here I hope it makes sense but as I said I will explain more in an article on my website if you go to English Made Simple dot net (www.www.englishmadesimple.net) and guys if you want me to talk about any particular topics for this show if you need any explanation if you need me to clarify anything to do with English language something you don’t understand even Slang (modismos) please let me know. Join the Facebook Group English Made Simple And just ask me a question I am friendly :) alright guys Hopefully you enjoyed this and I will speak with you soon until next episode I will see you soon Chau!