Grimer Girl here, I'm Minion Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language, writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, I have some of that cool stuff because we'll talk about a special quirk of Australian

English that people use when they're telling exciting stories or relaying crime reports.

And we'll talk about a slightly controversial way of using the word hopefully.

A listener named Milton asked why Australians use the present perfect tense for the past

tense.

For example, he said Australians would say, he has sculpt, instead of he sculpt.

That's the present perfect tense.

The verb has or have, combined with the past participle, has sculpt.

And somewhat confusingly, even though it's called the present perfect tense, it's

usually used to talk about something that happened at an unspecified time in the past.

I've spent significant time with a few Australians over the years.

My lab mate in grad school was from Adelaide, and a good friend is married to a man from

Sydney and we all worked together at a startup.

But I had never noticed them doing what Milton described, so I knew I had to look into it

more.

First, although you'll find some sources on the internet that say it's a myth that Australians

talk this way.

Papers published in the Australian Journal of Linguistics by Dolce Angle and Maria Eave

Ritz in 2000, and in the journal linguistics in 2008, found that Australians do use the

present perfect tense in more situations than people from other English-speaking countries.

...