What grammatical form is this and why do we use it?
Hello!
When asked "What did you do yesterday?" I answer "I went swimming." Why don't we say "I swam" or "I swam"? Instead, we answer "I cooked." What grammatical form is this with "was" + the infinitive, what is it called, and is there a rule for when it should be used this way?
Thank you very much and best regards!
PS I was just thinking again: What were you doing yesterday at 5 pm? Here you can
I swam (perhaps a little strangely), I swam, and I was swimming. Why is that?
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The same thing was asked a year ago. That’s why I answer the same thing now:
With be+Infinite in the German absent formed. This describes a temporary absence for the purpose of an activity. This works not only in the present, but in all forms of time, and also in the conjunctive: “I thought you had been eating.”
But the absentive is a quite new discovery and very little researched. Therefore, in many textbooks, it is mentioned at the outskirts (“peaceful”).
Don’t let it scare you off. Each German understands and uses such sentences. It only often makes problems to classify them grammatically clean. In my opinion, the study “I’ll learn German!“ from 2015 even today.
Absent! I didn’t know! Thank you.