Whatever happened to the simple past?

[MixedFeelingsNoFeelings]

I fear that the rapid proliferation of the present perfect - sticking 'have' in front of a verb - is making the past extinct.

'I've seen it last month' instead of 'I saw it last month.' (I'm not even considering 'I seen it last month', a whole other world of pain.)

You hear it a lot on reality police shows ('He's crossed the road and he's gone into the shop and they've followed him'). Perhaps that's where it comes from - people think it sounds more official and correct.

The format has its uses of course and I'm not going into a head-scrambling grammar lesson here (I'll leave that to more dedicated pedants!) My point is that when referring to a completed action in the past - in most cases, the simple, elegant past participle should be the go-to tense. I saw. He went. They followed.

It matters because, paradoxically, this overuse of the present perfect leaves us in a constant state of unfinished business.

Maybe it's arisen from the fluid, subscription times we're in, where it feels nobody's in charge and things drag on indefinitely - whether it's work/life boundaries, getting healthcare, dealing with officialdom or having a car.

Or maybe people don't feel confident using irregular past participles - saw, went, drove, did, spoke, broke, etc - so they just use the 'have' format for every past tense.

What do fellow pedants think?

I don’t see this very often at all. And I think I’d notice it.
Your example, ‘I’ve seen it last month’ stands out to me as odd and just wrong/bad grammar or a mistake for ‘I've seen it in the last month,’ referring to something either seen more than once, or something that is ongoing.

Sorry to be pedantic (I'm in the right place) but I don’t think you mean past participle. The past participle of to see is seen, not saw.

I think that in your "He's crossed the road and he's gone into the shop" example the speaker is trying to indicate that the action is ongoing. It is a state of 'unfinished business'. "He crossed the road and he went into the shop" has a sense that the action is in the past.

"I've seen it last month" is simply wrong. Inexcusably wrong. Just as bad as "I seen it last month".

That tense is very common in police witness statements. I've noticed it for years.

I have never understood why!

Yes, I agree - it's a narration of live events - as you'd hear in sports commentary.

YES! I work with police officers and noticed this a lot initially (now it just seems normal and I slip into it myself sometimes).

I've never quite figured out the reason, but maybe it has something to do with speaking on the radio at a scene of crime "he's gone into the house with the red door" ... And then that somehow slips into witness statements etc too.

I get what people are saying about it being the narration of a live event, but this is in the context of someone reporting past events to others - not narrating video footage or watching things happen in real time. It just bugs me and I can't work out why! Unnecessary drama perhaps? A bit childish-sounding?

@WhereAreWeNow you're right lol, I couldn't ba to check that one!

I think it might be because so many podcasts and broadcasters use the present historic to describe events.

Such as “and Henry VIII is coming to realise that he needs to break with the pope”.

If you tell a story, using the present tense makes it sound more dramatic.