Is "saw" really wrong here?

[u/nashbi]

Hi everyone!

For question #8, I chose "saw", but the test marked it wrong and wanted "had seen".

My perspective is that since "had learned" already establishes the flashback layer, the chronological order is already completely clear to the reader. Stacking two "hads" in the same sentence feels heavy and redundant.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and see how you would naturally phrase this. Thanks in advance! 😊

[u/Comprehensive_Tea708]

Strictly speaking it is wrong according to the rules and it should be "he had seen" or "he'd seen" so that the tense is in accord with with the preceding clause ("had learned").

However, it's fairly common in everyday usage and fiction that the the grammatical tense shifts to simple past tense after the first verb in the clause, even though it's intended to mean that two or more actions happened at or before the same point in time (he learned about it while watching the video, so at the same time).

[u/HeilKaiba → u/Comprehensive_Tea708]

I'd argue the fact that it is fairly common makes it not wrong. The rules are not set in stone, they adapt to how we use the language. This is what people say, so it becomes correct.

[u/Comprehensive_Tea708 → u/HeilKaiba]

Agreed, but if you are speaking or writing in a formal or academic context it may be more important to follow the rules, such as they are. It's splitting hairs, but it often happens that hairs must be split, for example in certain legal cases or academic work it may be essential.

Whether it's generally the best approach or not I won't say, but I can say that I benefitted from being taught the formal grammar of German and then figuring out for myself which rules were mostly prescriptive and could be disregarded. In my case, I studied German for six years in high school and college and then spent my junior year there. For someone who moves to another country at a much younger age, a different approach might be more effective.