about past tense
hello friends。
who can explain to me how to use past sentence correctly in daily talk～of course i know how to use it when writing something myself，but i have met lots of problems in conversation with native speakers～
for example，some days ago， i talked to an American girl ，and i misspelled her name by mistake ，she then replied ，“why you misspell （rather than misspelled）my name？” but the action“to misspell” definitely had happened before she replied～
another example，i wrote something on my FB，which i will paste below so that you can get what i mean :
me: my watching the movie 《lala land》was really a waste of time .
my friend replied from Australia: Agreed. It was a very mediocre movie.
look at it ！he used “agreed” rather than agree？？？i can understand why he wrote it was a mediocre movie －he had already watched the movie before before he saw what i had wrote，but i completely have no idea why he used “agreed” ？
OMG。now，i seriously dont know what i should do to be a correct user of past tense as a non native speaker...HELP me...😭
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Antworten · 10
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I beg to differ with Pavlina. It was ellipsis that confused you (the asker).
For the first sentence, it was actually “why DID( left out though) you misspell my name？”
And for the sencond, "Agreed." there meant "We are AGREED on the issue", that is, "I have the same opinion as you". You may also say "Agreed?" to others to ask for their opinions. "Agreed" is so commonly used without other words co-occuring that it has become an established exclamation.
In online text chat, some people tend to write in an over-elliptical style where certain words or letters are often left out.
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she then replied ，“why you misspell （rather than misspelled）my name？”
I think you misheard her. She would have said, "Why DID you misspell my name?" Sometimes, this will sound like "Why'd you ..." with the 'd' sound very soft.
look at it ！he used “agreed” rather than agree？？？
'Agreed' is short for "It is agreed". We rarely say "It is agreed" .... almost always it is abbreviated to "Agreed".
Alternatively, he could have said "I agree".
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Thanks so much！its so nice of you to explain to me ！
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Hello :) Don't worry, you will improve with time.
Ok, well, with the first one. Maybe you mispronounced the name more times and she used present tense as for things that happen regularly? It is also casual talk so it doesn't have to be all the time grammatically correct :)
And the second one, he used agreed as in passive "It is agreed." not I agree. He kind of wasn't doing the agreement, it was agreed in general.
Don't worry, none of those were in the past tense, so don't be worried and keep up with your good work :) I hope it help and I'm correct, maybe someone else will see it differently.
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