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So I was talking to a friend who is A2 CEFR and they asked me to explain past perfect. I told them it refers to the things which happend way long back. Then, they asked me how they'd say the sentence "I passed school a long time back" in German.

Deep L would say this is the appropriate translation:

Ich habe die Schule vor langer Zeit verlassen

Now, I think it would be that most people would agree that Present perfect suffices here. If that's the case, then when the heck do you use past perfect? How does one think about this tense even?

bakunin
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tryst with freedom
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    There are neither past perfect nor present perfect in German. If you want to talk about tenses in German, don't think in terms of English grammar. – Olafant Nov 25 '23 at 08:27
  • Past perfect: hatte verlassen. Present perfect: hat verlassen. Don't tell people stuff doesn't exist when it obviously does! – David Vogt Nov 25 '23 at 09:00
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    That German past pefect (Plusquamperfekt) is used for things that happened a long way back is simply wrong. Any good grammar book or article about German tenses will explain when Plusquamperfekt is used. For example, https://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/perfect/PastPerfect.html – RHa Nov 25 '23 at 10:02
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    @DavidVogt It''s Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt. Don't encourage people to use english grammar terms. – Olafant Nov 25 '23 at 13:15
  • @Olafant Don't encourage them to use Latin terms! One may prefer one terminology over another, but at least don't pretend that one of them doesn't exist. – David Vogt Nov 25 '23 at 13:26
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    Latin/English/German terminology: There are pros and cons for using any of them. I personally prefer English because it's my native language and grammar is hard enough without adding a layer of translation into the mix. But I understand that English grammar is not the same as German, and using the same terminology for both can be confusing. But I wouldn't say someone else's terminology is "wrong", just different. – RDBury Nov 25 '23 at 13:53
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    This Herr Antrim video offers an explanation of all German verb tenses for an English speaker. – RDBury Nov 25 '23 at 14:20
  • @RDBury Thank you for your excellent, solution-oriented comments! – Olafant Nov 25 '23 at 14:51

1 Answers1

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Past perfect (Plusquamperfekt, literally "more than" perfect, in Latin/German grammar) is only used relative to something else already happening in the past. In other words, it's used to say that something happened even earlier than something else that you're talking about.

It doesn't matter how long in the past it was in absolute terms, whether it was two seconds ago or hundreds of years ago.

Ich habe die Schule vor langer Zeit verlassen, nachdem ich viele lange Jahre dort abgesessen hatte. (I have left school long ago, after I had spent many years there.)

There are two time levels in this sentence, the time when the person left school (in Perfekt) and the time when the person was at school (in Plusquamperfekt), and that's the only reason why Plusquamperfekt is used and needed in this sentence.

In spoken German and in some dialects, people do use Plusquamperfekt in place of simple perfect, maybe to emphasize it. It always sounds clearly wrong from a standard German perspective.

Wir hören Musik von früher
Schauen uns verblasste Fotos an
Erinnern uns, was mal gewesen war. (from: Die Toten Hosen, "Altes Fieber")

Plusquamperfekt is incorrect according to the grammar of standard German here because "erinnern" is in present tense. It would be correct and needed if "erinnern" was already in the past: "Wir erinnerten uns, was mal gewesen war."

HalvarF
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