How to Translate ‘for’ in Present Perfect Tense

Before we start today, let’s take a look at one of your questions.

… What’s the difference between “I went to the store” and “I have gone to the store?”

Answer:

I believe you should know the answer if you have studied the previous lessons carefully.

Anyway, who knows the answer? Try to answer the above question before I get angry with you, sorry, before I try to answer! You have one minute to explain it clearly to your classmate, giving its Persian translation.

Did you do it? Great!

Now let’s try together.

“I went to the store” is in simple past tense while “I have gone to the store” is in present perfect tense. Fortunately, the person who has asked this question knows this definition. So, where is the problem?

He has probably forgotten to put /he/ sound between the verb and the suffixes, which gives us a verb in present perfect tense. Here’s how:

1- Delete /nu:n/ from the end of an infinitive to make a verb in simple past tense, here we have /ræftæn/ minus /nu:n/ = /ræft/.

2- Attach /he/ to this verb and you’ll have /ræfteh/.

3- Put the following suffixes at the end of /ræfteh/,

/æm/ – /i:/ – /æst/ – /im/ – /id/ – /ænd/

And you will have /ræfteh æm/ for ‘I have gone’, /ræfteh i:/ for ‘you have gone’, /ræfteh æst/ for ‘he/she has gone’, etc.

Result: we have made a verb in present perfect tense.

Now, let’s try again to make a verb in simple past tense.

1- Delete /nu:n/ from the end of an infinitive to make a verb in simple past tense, here we have /ræftæn/ minus /nu:n/ = /ræft/.

2- Attach the following suffixes to this verb:

/æm/ – /i:/ – /nothing/ (when the subject is he/she/it) – /im/ – /id/ – /ænd/.

And you’ll have /ræftæm/ for ‘I went’, /ræfti/ for ‘you went’, /ræft/ for ‘he or she went’, etc.

As you see, all the suffixes are the same except for ‘he/she/it’ for which we have no suffix in simple past tense. The difference between these two tenses is that there is /he/ sound between verbs and suffixes in present perfect tense, which does not exist in simple past tense.

Is the answer clear? I know it took more than one minute! But for me it’s ok! You have to be faster than me!

Now let’s translate these two sentences:

Store = /mægha:zeh/.

Maghazeh

I went to the store = /mæn beh mægha:zeh ræftæm/.

I have gone to the store = /mæn beh mægha:zeh ræfteh æm/.

I hope the problem is solved. If not, you have run into a problem that this online course cannot help you solve! Contact your local manufacturer!! (Just a joke)

All right, let’s see the quiz.

Quiz:
1- Listen to the audio files first (preferably once). Repeat it for a couple of times. Write it down on a paper. Find their English equivalents. (Seen).

ONe

One

Two

Two

Three

Three

2- Find the Persian equivalent for the following words and make five sentences with each of them (one in simple past tense, negative in simple past, interrogative in simple past, one in present perfect tense, and finally negative in present perfect tense).

Last week
Student
Mr.
To catch
Room
Market
To turn off

3- Say these numbers in Persian:

0 – 16 – 29 – 510 – 1001 – 12100 – 19999 – 50000

Ok, now let’s begin:

Last week, we learned how to make a sentence negative in present perfect tense. Today, we’ll practice it a bit more to become more fluent with it. Some of you have asked for more complicated structures, which need a wide variety of words. Please be patient, eh! Let’s do things step by step. In the meantime, we are not ready for more complicated sentences. What I am trying to do at this stage is to help you become acceptably familiar with all tenses using the very simple sentences. When the tenses are over successfully, I can be sure that longer sentences will bring us little difficulties, which can be solved more easily. Let me remind you again that Rome was not built in one day! It may take time to reach your final destination but, at least, you can be sure that what you are doing in this class is by all means a real job, which may not be found anywhere else.

Now, let’s begin!

Today, we need two words, which can help us a lot. Look at the following examples:

1- I haven’t seen him for one week.

2- I haven’t seen him since last week.

Can you guess the words? Perfect! They are ‘for’ and ‘since’ which are mostly used in this tense.

We already know all other words in the above sentences. Let’s try them one by one:

1- I haven’t seen him for one week.

I = subject
Haven’t seen = verb
Him = object

For one week => let’s accept this phrase as our ‘time’ in all sentences. And let’s start our Persian translation with this phrase. We already know ‘one week’ in Persian, which is /yek hæfteh/. Is that correct? Good!

Now, just suppose that this phrase has a verb and that verb is /æst/. We have already seen this verb in present perfect tense when the subject is he or she, like ‘he has gone’ = /u: ræfteh æst/.

Now, put the verb /æst/ after /yek hæfteh/ and you’ll have /yek hæfteh æst/. Is that clear? Good! Now put this word /keh/ after our newly made phrase and you’ll have this: /yek hæfteh æst keh/.

Although it is not necessary for you to know and you are not asked to do anything with /keh/ at this stage, this word has the same function as ‘that’ in the following sentence:

‘I know that he has gone’. Here, the word ‘that’ = /keh/. This is just for your information, that’s all.

All right, so far we have made this sentence: /yek hæfteh æst keh/, which is the Persian equivalent for ‘for one week’. Now, translate the first part of our above sentence, which is ‘I haven’t seen him’. It should be really easy. It means /mæn u: ra: nædideh æm/. Correct? Wonderful! The problem is gone!

Put this sentence /mæn u: ra: nædideh æm/ after our previous sentence, which is /yek hæfteh æst keh/, and you’ll have the following sentence:

/yek hæfteh æst keh mæn u: ra: nædideh æm/, which means I haven’t seen him for one week.

Was it difficult? Of course not!

One more thing,

In the above sentence, you can simply delete the subject, here /mæn/. So, we can say /yek hæfteh æst keh u: ra: nædideh æm/. As you already know, we can easily find the subject of our sentences through the suffixes attached to the verbs. Do you remember it? Perfect!

Let’s see some more examples:

How do you say this sentence in Persian?

He hasn’t seen his book for one week.

It should be very simple now. We can say: /yek hæfteh æst keh keta:bæsh ra: nædideh æst/.

Easy, isn’t it?

Need more examples? Try the following:

I haven’t cleaned my computer for one week.

We can say: /yek hæfteh æst keh ka:mpyu:teræm ra: tæmiz nækærdeh æm/.

They haven’t written a letter for one year.

/yek sa:l æst keh na:meh i: næneveshteh ænd/.

Paul hasn’t touched this table for one day.

/yek ru:z æst keh Paul beh in mi:z dæst næzædeh æst/.