Confused by a native speaker

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Hello,I got confused twice by a native speaker (British English) today.Confusion #1:Upon seeing the sentence How long do you know her?, my English friend claimed that it was correct English. I asked him why and he just said it sounded good.However, I'd use How long have you know her? Is the former sentence really correct and/or natural English?Confusion #2:My English friend and I were discussing which tenses can "fit" in the following sentence:The old lady _______ (cross) the street when the car hit her.I came up with:The old lady was crossing the street when the car hit her.The old lady had (just) crossed the street when the car hit her.My English friend claimed that The old lady had been crossing the street when the car hit her was the most natural sentence - I suspect he was just pulling my leg. Would you ever use the sentence with the past perfect progressive tense?Thanks in advance for your answers.

Canadian45 · Accepted Answer

PastsimpleHello,I got confused twice by a native speaker (British English) today.Confusion #1:Upon seeing the sentence How long do you know her?, my English friend claimed that it was correct English. I asked him why and he just said it sounded good.However, I'd use How long have you know her? Is the former sentence really correct and/or natural English?

Most people would say the second sentence, and it sounds the most natural. But you can't say that the first sentence is wrong. There is nothing wrong with the grammar and the meaning is clear.

Confusion#2: My English friend and I were discussing which tenses can "fit" in the following sentence:

The old lady __ (cross) the street when the car hit her.

I came up with:

The old lady was crossing the street when the car hit her. [Y] sounds very natural

The old lady had (just) crossed the street when the car hit her. This has a different meaning. It means that she was hit by the car just after she crossed the street. Maybe she was hit when she was on the sidewalk.

My English friend claimed that 'The old lady had been crossing the street when the car hit her.' was the most natural sentence.

I suspect he was just pulling my leg. Would you ever use the sentence with the past perfect progressive tense? It's a correct sentence, but I personally would not use a more complicated tense like that when simple past tense is very adequate and natural sounding.

Unclefegg · Answer

These types of conversations are always hard to moderate, but in confusion #1, your friend has an extremely colloquial ear for English. Please do not use "How long do you know her?" as this is poor grammar. The correct form is the present perfect "how long have you known her?" Please note that "to know" is a stative verb (meaning no -ing form), and takes the form "known" in the present perfect.

In confusion #2, the most natural structure would be "was crossing," although "had crossed" is correct as long as what you wanted to imply was that she was hit near the edge or margin of the roadway (or even on completely off the street) rather than somewhere in the middle (was crossing implies an uncompleted action while had crossed indicates that the action was essentially completed).

Again, your friend's choice of "had been crossing" is non-standard and at best suggests that she had been crossing the street repeatedly before the car struck her. That would be an extremely low-usage form and open to all sorts of confusion, so I do not recommend it under any circumstances.

Pastsimple · Answer

I somehow managed to type know instead of known, now I feel like a complete idiot. :-)

Canadian45 · Answer

Unclefegg Please do not use "How long do you know her?" as this is poor grammar.

How is it poor grammar? While it is not the common way to say it, that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

A. Do you know her?

B. Yes, I do.

A. How long do you know her? (There is no reason that you have to switch tenses.)

It's the same as 'How long did you know her?' (when she's no longer living)

Please note that "to know" is a stative verb (meaning no -ing form), and takes the form "known" in the present perfect. Thanks for catching that. [Y] I completely missed the absent "n".

In confusion #2, the most natural structure would be "was crossing," "had crossed" is correct as long as what you wanted to imply was that she was hit near the edge or margin of the roadway (or even on completely off the street)

I can't agree. To me, "had crossed" only means that she had finished crossing the street.

rather than somewhere in the middle (was crossing implies an uncompleted action while had crossed indicates that the action was essentially completed). Again, I would say that "had crossed" means 'completely finished crossing'. " means Again, your friend's choice of "had been crossing" is non-standard and at best suggests that she had been crossing the street repeatedly before the car struck her. I don't agree with that. But I agree that "was crossing" is the best choice.

Maybe there is a difference between different Englishes here.

??

CalifJim · Answer

PastsimpleUpon seeing the sentence How long do you know her?, my English friend claimed that it was correct English. I asked him why and he just said it sounded good.
However, I'd use How long have you know her? Is the former sentence really correct and/or natural English?

You will lose points on a standardized test for saying that "How long do you know her?" is correct. You are right. It's "How long have you known her?" There is no poorer informant for learning a foreign language than a native speaker who just goes by whatever strikes him as correct on the spur of the moment, so be careful in that respect. Filter that advice carefully.

PastsimpleThe old lady was crossing the street when the car hit her.
The old lady had (just) crossed the street when the car hit her.

My English friend claimed that The old lady had been crossing the street when the car hit her was the most natural sentence

While all three are possible, I don't know what evidence could be gathered to support the idea that the third one is the most natural. My intuition tells me that that claim is unsupportable.

CJ

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