I've been listening to this crooner James Blunt song called "Goodbye, my lover"-- I'm really not a fan, he's just somehow wildly popular in France-- but I suddenly find it achingly and heartbreakingly beautiful because of its use of the present perfect tense. It changes everything to say "you have been the one for me" instead of "you were". It implies that the singer is still in love with his ex because as any one of my students will tell you, we use the present perfect to describe experience and things that began in the past but continue into the present.
Unfortunately, the present is rarely perfect and sometimes you just have to change tenses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyggTKDcOE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment