Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
I appreciate your answer MMM-- so I'm not crazy (at least in this instance), right? I should just come out and say what this is about-- this is from a practice test (which was written by Japanese people for Japanese people) and I'm being told that "did you..." is wrong. I'm also being told that "the" is wrong, because "this" is correct. I guess if you want to get into a Japanese high school (in my general area at least) it is imperitive that you know this kind of thing.
I thought about putting this in the English help... but I'm not sure. I kind of want to hear from Japanese speakers of English who might have some insight as to why it would be dangerous (for lack of a better word) to learn "did you" instead of "have you"-- like would learning/using "did you" induce certain errors or something like that. Not that I've noticed any teachers in my working life who take the time to think about "induced errors". Besides, as a naive English speaker myself, I too find that all of my examples would be correct. If nothing else, "did you" sounds better to me in most instances that I can come up with.
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It really depends on the context.
"This" makes sense because there is この, so the book is probably in the speaker's hands.
"Have you" sounds more correct, like "Have you read this book?"
However, the もう is a little funny in English. To me it sounds like there is an expectation the book would have been read with the もう so "Have you already read this book?" or "Did you already read this book?" could be correct.
The "Have you" sounds like the listener might be a fan of the author so the speaker expects she may have already read it.
The "Did you" sounds like it may be a homework assignment, so the speaker expects she may have already read it.
Isn't English fun?