ENGLISH EXPLAINED 9/2019 Spotlight 47“Once upon a time...” — those are pretty famous
words, especially when it comes to fairy tales. In fact,
most fairy tales that were told to me as a child started
with those very words. Have a look at these opening
sentences:
⋅ “Once upon a time, there lived a king and a
queen who lacked but one thing on earth to
make them entirely happy.” (Sleeping Beauty)
⋅ “Once upon a time, there lived a gentleman who
married twice.” (Cinderella)
⋅ “Once upon a time, there were three bears who
lived together in a house of their own in a wood.”
(Goldilocks and the Three Bears)
⋅ “Once upon a time, there was a man and a
woman who had long, in vain, wished for a
child.” (Rapunzel)
⋅ “Once upon a time, there was a poor miller who
had a very beautiful daughter.” (Rumpelstiltskin)
⋅ “Once upon a time, many, many years ago, there^
lived an emperor who thought so much of new
clothes that he spent all his money in order to
obtain them.” (The Emperor’s New Clothes)
⋅ “Once upon a time, there was a prince who
wished to marry a princess; but she must be a
real princess.” (The Princess and the Pea)
⋅ “Once upon a time, it was beautiful in the
country, it was summertime; the wheat was
yellow, the oats were green, the hay was stacked
up in the green meadows, and the stork paraded
about on his long red legs.” (The Ugly Duckling)
Why am I telling you this? Because we can actually
learn an important grammar point from the phrase
“Once upon a time...” If you look at the opening sen-
tences again, you’ll notice that all of them are in theENGLISH EXPLAINED
Once upon a time...
Unser Kolumnist erinnert sich an die Märchen
seiner Kindheit – und kommentiert eine wichtige
grammatikalische Gemeinsamkeit.MEDIUM USduckling [(dVklIN]
, Entenküken, Entlein
emperor [(emp&rEr]
, Kaiser
entirely [In(taI&rli]
, vollkommen
fairy tale [(feri )teI&l]
, Märchen
hay [heI]
, Heu
indicator word
[(IndIkeIt&r w§:d]
, Signalwort
in vain [In (veIn]
, vergeblich
meadow [(medoU]
, Wiese, Aue
miller [(mIl&r]
, Müller(in)
oats [oUts]
, Hafer
obtain [Eb(teIn]
, bekommen
pea [pi:]
, Erbse
pretty [(prIti]
, hier: ziemlich
stork [stO:rk]
, Storch
subscriber [sEb(skraIb&r]
, Abonnent(in)
wheat [wi:t]
, Weizensimple past. Why? Because the simple past is used to
describe events that are “locked in the past” — like
the action in most stories.
For example, if I were telling a story about my
childhood, it would begin with something like “I was
born in 1982.” If I wanted to continue with my story,
I might say, “I grew up in Queens.”
If you’re having a hard time deciding when to use
which tense, one thing that can help you is to look
for indicator words — that is, words that are always
or often used with certain tenses.
One indicator word for the simple past is “ago.”
Anytime you see the word “ago,” which means “in the
past,” you should use the simple past. Another indi-
cator word for the simple past is “last,” in the sense of
“Last week, I saw my friend.”
With the phrase “Once upon a time...,” you know
right away that what follows will be in the simple
past because the word “once” means “at some time
in the past.”
And that’s the end of this story. May you live hap-
pily ever after.You can read new, modern versions of all the fairy tales mentioned
in this column (and more) in our series Grammar Tales, starting
from issue 11/18. They are available to subscribers in our download
archive at http://www.spotlight-verlag.de/digitalarchivFotos: privat; iStockphoto/iStock.com
THE LANGUAGE PAGES
Welcome to the language pages
Over the next dozen or more pages, we give you the opportunity to practise
grammar and vocabulary in an up-to-date context. We start off here with
a column that takes a light-hearted look at English in popular culture.CHAD SMITH
Originally from New York City, Chad Smith is a
freelance journalist and English teacher who now
lives in Hamburg.