Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings

At 19:32 14/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>> And they do, even 'fui' (I have been) is perfectly behaved  :)
>
>Speaking of which verb, how did the _fui_ forms come to be preterites of
>both _ir_ and _ser_ in Spanish?
>
        Just like the past of "aller" in French may be "je suis allé" but is more
often "j'ai été" (in fact, those two forms are used in different contexts:
"je suis allé": I went - but I went back after -, "j'ai été" - and I'm
still there -. But this distinction is disappearing). It's logical: when
you "went" somewhere, you "have been" there. Except when the action is the
most important part of the message, "going somewhere" in the past is
equivalent to "being there" after the "going" has been finished.

                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

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