Tense confusion: I went / I have been to the market yesterday

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

Hello every one,

“I have been to the market yesterday”
“I went to the market yesterday”

are these both sentences above grammatically correct …i mean the usage of the tenses.
the first sentence is in the PRESENT PERFECT tense i believe ,while the second sentence is in the SIMPLE PAST tense.

kindly shed some light with regard to the tense in both sentences

thank you in advance
purley

2

Hi Purley,

In a grammatical sense ‘yesterday’ is clearly a definite time in the past and when you are describing events that have no connection with ‘now’ (the present), you usually use the Past Simple tense. As a result you say: Yesterday I went to the market/I went to the market yesterday. When you use the Present Perfect, there is not a reference to any definite time as in: I have been to the market many times. ‘Many times’ refers to the past but there is no indication when precisely this was.

Alan

3

thank you alan for the prompt reply

purley