Hi,
Please could you explain why the past perfect tense is used in the following extract? Would it be possible to use the past simple instead?
The last time I’d seen her (at a wedding four years back) she’d had some tall, dark specimen in tow. Although everything about him was theoretically perfect, I hadn’t been particularly impressed, to me he’d seemed just a bit plastic, somehow. I don’t quite know what it was with this one - he wasn’t classically good-looking, exactly, but the spark hit me at once!
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Hi Irina,
I quite agree. The past simple is much better in that text because there is no indication that what the writer thought or what the man looked like is back another stage from the simple past, in other words it’s a narrative of the past without reference to a prior time before that.
Clever girl ! How are you these days?
Alan
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Hi Alan,
Thank you very much! Now I’m polishing English and slowly learning German. Every day I watch English videos on YouTube. Especially I’m interested in pronunciation. BBC Learning English helps with it a lot.
How is it going?
Irina
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Did you get my message, Irina?
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Hi Alan,
Sorry for the late reply. I have messaged you.
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