Sentence: He was living in Japan for 5 years.

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello,

He was living in Japan for 5 years.

I know the sentence above is weird, but I cannot explain why. Progressive doesn’t agree with “for(duration)”, but why? Please answer me!

Thanks,
sweetpumpkin

2

Good morning SweetP. The sentence is not weird at all. Perfectly acceptable English.

3

Hi, Kitosdad,

He was living in Japan for 5 years.

I’ve checked the grammar book. It says past progressive shows that sometning was in progress around a particular past time. Since ‘for 5 years’ is not a particular past time but a duration of time, I think that’s why the sentence is wrong. But… do you mean, even though the sentence is grammatically wrong, it is acceptable in English?

Thanks,
sweetpumpkin

4

SweetP, it is certainly acceptable English.

He was living in Japan for five years.

I am pretty sure that some of our grammatical experts may find a fault somewhere in the text, but as an everyday comment it is perfectly acceptable.

5

I still think ‘He was living in Japan for the past five years’ would be more acceptable if I intend to put ‘for’ and ‘past progressive’ together. Anyway, thanks for your attention, Kitosdad.

6

If you have “a period of time” Present Perfect Continuous is used.

He has been/had been living in Japan for 5 years.

7

Hi Sweetpumpkin,

‘He was living in Japan for five years’ is all right as it stands but it leaves the reader/listener asking: Yes, and then what? The Past Continuous is often used as a background tense and is often set against something in the Past Simple saying what happened during this period. With that in mind you could say: He was living in Japan for five years when he realised that it was time to learn the language properly.

Alan