I got this in my reviews today, asking me to put an emphasis ‘yo’:
私わたしはUFOを見みたことがある
But I don’t understand the end of the sentence. Specifically this part “見たことがある”. Not sure how to look it up - I tried searching “koto” but got nowhere. Can someone break down the grammar for me here? I’m going in Genki order and I haven’t learned this in the text yet.
Hey there!
verb[short affirmative past tense] + ことがある describes that someone had the experience of doing that verb before.
私はUFOを見たことがある。= I have had the experience of seeing a UFO. (Or more naturally, “I have seen a UFO before.”)
By contrast, 「私はUFOを見た。」is saying “I saw a UFO” which carries a different feel from the example sentence. It indicates one specific time that you saw it.
Japanese Ammo with Misa gives this great example…
日本に行ったことがある。= I’ve been to Japan before.
日本に行った。= I went to Japan. (indicates you went there at a specific time)
去年日本に行った。= I went to Japan last year.
If you’re using the second edition of Genki 1, you can find this grammar point in Lesson 11 on page 256. It’s also here on Bunpro as well if you’d like to see more examples.
Thank you! It’s a little odd that you get sample sentences with grammar you haven’t studied yet. Do you think it’s best to try and learn this grammar as you see the sentences, or trust it will come up in later lessons?
No problem! If you’re following a book path instead of BP’s original N5 setup, I think you might encounter some grammar points from a future lesson in example sentences, but not enough to hinder your learning. I was using BP before the paths feature was introduced and I never found grammar points before they were introduced…until I skipped ahead to add what I knew to my queue and found some unknown grammar from lessons in between. I believe the original setup was designed to not show you examples of things you’ve not encountered, but grammar resources have their own rhyme and reason to introducing items. So, following a path here changes up the order.
For me, when I come across something I haven’t learned yet in an example, I give that unknown point a quick look up to see when it’ll appear and get the general idea of its functionality. Then, I wait until I actually get to it to really dive into the point. Hope this helps!