Re: Danish enigma

>
> In that connection you remark:
>
> > (but is there a tendency in Dutch to
> > use the perfect, eg. 'Ik ben hier gisteren geweest' "I was here
> > yesterday"? My Dutch is getting rusty.)
>
>
> They are both normal and have been so for a long time. The

preterite

> directs your attention towards the past and would be appropriate if
> you followed it up with a story about what happened then, or if
> you're musing about how extraordinarily nice things were yesterday
> compared with today; whereas the perfect states that such and such

an

> event happened in the past and that the speaker assumes that the
> hearer finds it useful or fun (etc.) to know in the present. The
> presence of an adverbial expression indicating some moment in the
> past does not render the use of a perfect almost impossible the way
> it does in English. Aren't things that way in Danish?
>

No, not really. 'Jeg var her igår' is normal. 'Jeg har været
her'. 'Jeg har været her igår' sounds like it needs a comma: 'Jeg har
været her, igår', as if you are adding the extra information as an
afterthought. Germans or French speaking Danish use that kind of
sentences, and persevere in using them. I thought myself that that
use in Dutch might be caused by French or German influence.


Torsten