A Present Perfect Christmas

We haven't looked at any grammar in a while so I thought we could combine a little Present Perfect with yet, already and still with the topic of Christmas.

The Christmas period can be a very hectic one because we have to get a lot of things ready before the big day on the 25th of December. Look at this check-list. What have you already done? What haven't you done yet? What do you still need to do?

• Buy a turkey
• Buy presents
• Send Christmas cards
• Wrap presents
• Make a Christmas cake
• Decorate the tree

1. I haven't bought a turkey yet, but I'm going to get one next weekend.
   
2. I have already bought the presents, they cost me a fortune!
   
3. I have already sent Christmas cards. I took them to the post office last week.
   
4. I haven't wrapped the presents yet, I'm still looking for some gold wrapping paper.
   
5. I haven't made a Christmas cake yet, because I still haven't bought the dried fruit.
   
6. I have already decorated the tree. It looks beautiful!
   

Notice the position of the adverbs in the sentences. Yet always comes at the end in negative or interrogative sentences. Already always comes between the auxiliary verb 'have' and the past participle. Still comes after the subject of the sentence and before the auxiliary verb. It can be used to mean the same as yet (sentence 5) or to emphasise that an action remains in progress (sentence 4).

Now practise.

It's been a long time...

I've been feeling a little homesick lately, so I thought we'd take a look at one of those English structures that's so different from Spanish that it always seems to throw Spanish speaks into confusion:

It's (been) a long time since
+
past simple/present perfect.

For example:

It's (been) a long time since I went/I've been home. (I last went home in December 2005!)

The Spanish translation would be:

Hace mucho que no voy a mi país. (or something similar)

The confusion lies in two things:

• In English, to express the idea of a period of time which began in the past and continues until the present, we use the present perfect, whereas Spanish uses the present.
• In addition, in English we don't use a negative, as the idea of not doing something is implicit in the construction: If the last time you did it was x time ago, you haven't done it in the entire intervening period.

Incidentally, "It's (been) a long time since" has several variations to express really long period of time, or for emphasis: It's (been) ages / forever / eons / yonks [very colloquial] since ...

You can also use "a while" instead of "a long time", or a specific period, such as "five years", "a weeks", "a few months", etc.