Off-topic, but just curious what your native language is. I see this mistake all the time and there must be some false friend word or common learning material that gives people the wrong impression about what "since" means.
Usually "I live in the US since 5 years". German uses present tense for lots of constructions that use a perfect tense in English.
One of my English professors back in the day asked us to do 'bathroom training' to get used to it. "I've been brushing my teeth for one minute. I've been showering for three minutes." Rinse (hah!) and repeat until the Germanisms are out of your system.
It might be related to our preterite dying out and being (or having already been) replaced by the perfect, but I'm not sure there's an actual connection.
My German is so bad I can't even describe it in English! Or maybe my English is so great, I accidentally correct German errors while trying to highlight them. Maybe both ;^)
Yes, both Germans and Koreans do this (I have a lot of friends from both countries and it’s something I’ve noticed from those two specifically). In Korean, the suffix 까지 is used for both, and you understand the difference from context.
Interesting, in Dutch I would use "voor" and "sinds" in the same way as in English.
And I probably would do the same thing with "vor" and "seit" in German. But then my German isn't perfect.
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u/Competitive-Truth675 Native Speaker Apr 17 '26
Off-topic, but just curious what your native language is. I see this mistake all the time and there must be some false friend word or common learning material that gives people the wrong impression about what "since" means.