Enough to have spent vs enough to spend

Question

1. If there is enough time to have spent on learning English, you can improve your language skill in a very short time.

2. If there is enough time to spend on learning English, you can improve your language skill in a very short time.

Q1) Are both sentences correct?

Q2) What is the difference in meaning between "enough time to have spent" and "enough time to spend"?

GPY · Accepted Answer

fire11. If there is enough time to have spent on learning English, you can improve your language skill in a very short time.
2. If there is enough time to spend on learning English, you can improve your language skill in a very short time.
Q1) Are both sentences correct?

(1) is not correct. (2) is less incorrect but is not the greatest sentence ever written. "If you have enough time ..." seems better in this context.

fire1Q2) What is the difference in meaning between "enough time to have spent" and "enough time to spend"?

I will assume that "time" is implied to be the object of "spend" (e.g. ignoring cases such as "I didn't have enough time to spend all my money", where the words in question overlap phrase boundaries).

"enough time to have spent" has a perfect-tense sense, e.g. applicable to situations where you could say "I have spent (a given amount of time)", but it feels unusual, and it is quite hard to think of good examples. One possible example would be something like "Six weeks is enough time to have spent in hospital", said when you have just been discharged. In practice, though, some people may dispense with the complexity of the perfect infinitive, and in this situation just say "Six weeks is enough time to spend in hospital" instead.

Enough to have spent vs enough to spend

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