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Guest Posted 22 years ago
Grammar
"I was meeting thousands..." vs "I met thousands..."
I read in my grammar book the following sentence used to illustrate “past continuous”: “I was meeting thousands of people and getting to know no one.” What will be the difference in the interpretation if I had said: “I met thousands of people and got to know no one.”? As you can see, I don’t know how to deal with the punctuation on my last sentence.
Top answer
Simply stated, the continuous suggests the meeting activities and their duration; the speaker is thinking of each of those many meetings and their unsatisfactory outcomes. The simple past suggests the accomplished fact, the sum total of all those meetings; overall, the speaker is thinking, the experience was a failure. The continuous communicates more emotion, a greater immediacy of the experience to the listener, as it is more closely associated with the speaker's ongoing feelings about it.
- Simply stated, the continuous suggests the meeting activities and their duration; the speaker is thinking of each of those many meetings and their unsatisfactory outcomes.
- The simple past suggests the accomplished fact, the sum total of all those meetings; overall, the speaker is thinking, the experience was a failure.
- The continuous communicates more emotion, a greater immediacy of the experience to the listener, as it is more closely associated with the speaker's ongoing feelings about it.
- Your punctuation is fine on your latter sentence; where you might want a comma is in the first sentence after 'people', which would stress the duration of the experience.
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5 Answers
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Simply stated, the continuous suggests the meeting activities and their duration; the speaker is thinking of each of those many meetings and their unsatisfactory outcomes.
The simple past suggests the accomplished fact, the sum total of all those meetings; overall, the speaker is thinking, the experience was a failure.
The continuous communicates more emotion, a greater immedia
The simple past suggests the accomplished fact, the sum total of all those meetings; overall, the speaker is thinking, the experience was a failure.
The continuous communicates more emotion, a greater immedia
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There are several ways to conceptualize the difference between the past simple and the past continuous. Since the grammar books already give a left-brain analysis, you may as well try a few right-brain impressions. Some of them border on the mystical. They don't make sense at all to some people, but you may find it useful to give it a try.
Past Simple = a point in time
Past Con
Past Simple = a point in time
Past Con
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Nice presentation, Jim. Could you expand upon 'opacity' for me? It is unfamiliar.
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Hey Mr. Mic!
Yes, that was really too fanciful, wasn't it? As I said, this is all impressionistic in nature, so don't take it too literally! By "opaque" I think I meant "inaccessible, blocked off from".
I was experimenting with the concepts of opacity and transparency, and the experiment flopped! In the clear light of day I now think the example should have been omitted.
Yes, that was really too fanciful, wasn't it? As I said, this is all impressionistic in nature, so don't take it too literally! By "opaque" I think I meant "inaccessible, blocked off from".
I was experimenting with the concepts of opacity and transparency, and the experiment flopped! In the clear light of day I now think the example should have been omitted.
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The beauty of it is that this is probably nearer to how a native speaker's head works-subconsciously in forming utterances, than are the rules set out in a grammar book.
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