# Nobody's perfect

Canonical page: https://dominiklukes.net/writing/nobodys-perfect

The piece contrasts the Czech and English tense systems and explains why English perfect tenses lack direct Czech equivalents.

Journalism · Reporting · The Prague Post · c. 2000

Published in The Prague Post, c. 2000. Text from the author's final draft; the printed version may differ slightly.

Czech beats English on cases seven nil but suffers an ignominious defeat of 3:14 when the game turns to tenses. Czech has to do with past, present and future where English has four kinds of each plus two extras in the futures department. For one present in Czech, English boasts present simple, present progressive, present perfect and present perfect progressive. Perfects, as you can see, play a significant role in the tense make-up of Shakespeare's tongue and they are surprisingly lacking from Czech. Does it make any difference when you're learning Czech? Damn right! It would be extremely surprising if it didn't. It makes it difficult to say things like *I've lived here for a year* (Present Perfect) and impossible to even approach saying *When I come, the dishes will have been washed* (Future Perfect).

That is not to say that Czech is deficient in some way but goes about saying things in a different way.

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## About this item

- Type: Journalism
- Genre: Reporting
- Published: c. 2000
- Outlet: The Prague Post
- Language: English

Topics: [Czech language and culture](https://dominiklukes.net/topics/czech), [Language learning and teaching](https://dominiklukes.net/topics/language-learning), [Language and linguistics](https://dominiklukes.net/topics/language-and-linguistics).

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Section: [Writing](https://dominiklukes.net/writing)