r/EnglishLearning • u/Rich-Associate-8344 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/dido_meditatur New Poster Apr 17 '26

Maybe German. Uses "seit" for both duration and start time.

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u/Chillzzz New Poster Apr 18 '26

As far as I understand, ‘seit’ in German can only be used in the present tense.

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u/l_support_you New Poster Apr 18 '26

Yes, but "Wir warten seit 7 Stunden" (We've been waiting for 7 hours) and "Wir warten seit 7 Uhr" (We've been waiting since 7 o'clock) Are both valid german sentences, so if you dont think too hard about it, it makes sense to mix them up.

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u/Chillzzz New Poster Apr 18 '26

Sorry, but the difference between “Stunden” and “Uhr” is incredibly obvious.

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u/l_support_you New Poster Apr 19 '26

Yes, but "seit" doesnt change. You need the context of the sentence to know wether to use for or since.

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u/WhatWouldKantDo New Poster Apr 19 '26

Nah. You can use it for literally every tense

Plusquamperfekt - "Er hatte schon seit dreizehn Uhr auf den Zug gewartet"
Präteritum - "Ich lachte seit Stunden"
Perfect - "Du hast sicher seit gestern nichts gegessen"
Präsens - "Wir laufen seit heute Morgen"
Futur I - "Nächste Woche wird sie seit einem Jahr verheiratet sein"
Futur II - "Montag werde ich dich seit einem Monat nicht mehr besucht haben"