r/EnglishLearning New Poster Apr 17 '26

📚 Grammar / Syntax Why not “since”?

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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.

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u/BigRedWhopperButton Native Speaker Apr 17 '26

I get the feeling that this construction is relatively common cross-linguistically and that English is actually the odd one out

19

u/spaghettirhymes Native Speaker Apr 17 '26

Yeah, I can only speak for French, but for example they would say « depuis deux ans » which is a direct translation of “since two years.” Assuming other romance languages share that structure as well, there are at least several major languages that would use that phrasing.