Does this sentence "much as I had enjoyed my adventure, it was good to be back." have different meanings?
By dennislv
@dennislv (134)
Shanghai, China
September 6, 2013 12:45am CST
"much as I had enjoyed my adventure, it was good to be back."
at that time, had the speaker been back yet?
Was he going to go back and thought he'd better be back, or he was already back and after that found it was good being back?
I know this much, to do sth. tends to mean it doeasn't really happen, am I right?
So the sentence above actually means "I had better go back"?
help me.
1 response
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
6 Sep 13
There is only one meaning the sentence can have. It's a statement in the past tense about the way that the speaker felt when he returned home. If he were speaking to someone at the time of his return, he might have said (in the present tense): "Much as I [have] enjoyed my adventure, it is good to be back."
When he is (later) talking about his feelings about returning home, he has to change the tense of the two verbs to express what he felt at some time in the past:
"I [have] enjoyed ... " becomes "I had enjoyed"
"It is good ..." becomes "it was good"
(although "I have enjoyed" or "I enjoyed" is, itself, in the past perfect form, the auxiliary "have" is in the present tense and, in order to match "it was good", it must be changed to a sort of 'double past' tense by using "had".)
If the speaker meant to convey that he had come to the end of his adventure, but had not yet returned home, he would say:
"Much as I have enjoyed my adventure, it will be good to be back."
If there were some doubt about his returning (soon or ever), he might say:
"Much as I have enjoyed my adventure, it would be good to be back."
If the adventure were not yet finished but he was looking forward to returning home, he might say:
"Much as I am enjoying my adventure, it will be good to be back."
The sentence is a good example of a way in which one uses the comma to take the place of a conjunction. The simplest form of the statement would be:
"I had enjoyed my adventure very much BUT it was good to be back."
It's also worth pointing out that "Much as ..." in this construction is quite different from the comparative phrase: "As much as" (which means 'equal to').
1 person likes this
@jewcial (135)
• Shanghai, China
9 Sep 13
hallo my teacher lol ~ i think i have lots of thing to learn from u , would u teach me ? master
@dennislv (134)
• Shanghai, China
10 Sep 13
but, still, can the sentense be a third-part narration discribing the writer's thought near the end of his adventure?
as this:"At that time, I had enjoyed my adventure, but it was good time for me to think about returning?"
Can this also be a reasonable understanding?