R: French question -- tenses

P.Dunn wrote:

> Question about French verb tenses.  I know that the perfect is often used
> to express simple past:
>
> j'ai mange' = "I ate"
>
> It seems I'm seeing the use of the simple present as a sort of narrative
> tense.  Is this is a peculiariaty of the text I'm learning from, an
> oversimplification, perhaps, or is this common in written French.  I see
> things like:
>
> je mange la cane, et c'est si bonne.
> For what in English would be expressed:
> I *ate* the duck, and it *was* so good.
>
> I'm just confused.  Maybe there's a table online that lists the common
> uses of all the French tenses.  (Spanish is so much easier!)
Northern Italian dialects, lacking remote past tense, always use present in
narrations.

'Vu a mangià e ma corgi che gh'è nagutt in dal frigo' means 'I go to eat
but I discovery there's nothing in the fridge' but also 'I went to eat but I
dicoveried there was nothing in the fridge'. The meaning must be assumed by
context.

Luca