San Migs
- 2016-01-05
I do not know if languages other than English use the journalistic present tense in the captions of photos.
To me that is an interesting point, and also I suspect CL and Turnoi.
It seems the usual conversation topic on here is chinese wives, money, or crappy TC's. Any post that mixes things up a bit, is good in my book.
martin hainan
- 2016-01-05
Photographs are things. Things have no tense. In the use of the English language, verbs have tense.
As the original poster explains, the CAPTIONS applied to photographs in media create the grammatical issue in their description of the photo's content. If the content is merely other 'things', there is no problem. "This is a red car." If the content of the photo includes action, newspapers and electronic media often describe the action in the present tense, even though the event obviously occurred in the past. "This is a plane crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001." "This is Hitler waving to troops in Berlin."
I do not know if languages other than English use the journalistic present tense in the captions of photos.
San Migs
- 2016-01-05
I would agree that photographs are past tense, as I explained to students in Hong Kong just previously when teaching grammar points, eg:
"I have taken a walk" not, "I have took a walk" or "I have take a walk"
With photos surely there is no wiggle room as to tenses, unless you count futurity (future tense), for photos one is planning to take, surely?
Interesting discussion point.