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Q) Next month, I _______ John for 20 years

(A) know

(B) will have known

(C) am knowing

(D) will have been knowing

Question bank says (D) is correct. Surely, (B) is the correct one, right?

Edit:

I request answers/comments that reflect common practices of American and British English.

These websites also say that the answer is (D).

tryingtobeastoic
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    create accounts correct them and link to here. – WendyG May 23 '22 at 16:30
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    If we don't normally say "I am knowing you/him/her" etc. then it stands to reason we avoid the present continuous in all it forms. – Mari-Lou A May 23 '22 at 16:42
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    @Mari-LouA I can think of cases where future perfect progressive would be idiomatic (“I will have been dating John for a year,” “I will have been avoiding John,” and some other verbs, particularly those for actions that can be stopped and restarted), it doesn’t work well with “knowing”” in AmE. – Davislor May 24 '22 at 03:40
  • I meant any continuous forms of know.e.g She was knowing him... we would have been knowing.... etc. Believe and want are two other verbs that are not usually used in the progressive form. – Mari-Lou A May 24 '22 at 05:07
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    I looked at those websites which claim that (d) is correct. I would fervently avoid them, especially any which says Choose to correct option: argh!! Trustworthy websites will say (b) is the correct answer. – Mari-Lou A May 24 '22 at 05:24
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    Related question on English Language and Usage stack. Also, this claims that "in South Asia [(D)] may be common. There is a regional preference there for the past continuous tense of the verb (been knowing for known.)" – Kirt May 24 '22 at 14:45
  • @tryingtobeastoic Regarding your edit, comments on both these websites have been posted by people whose first language is not American English or British English. Be cautious about who you believe. :) – Graham May 24 '22 at 17:11
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    There's a biblical sense of "knowing" someone. And D might be appropriate if it occurred every Friday night after a bottle of wine. – Wyck May 26 '22 at 13:27
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    https://blog.learntube.academy/du-a-unit-admission-question-solution-2011-2012/ has the correct solution. I suspect the solution banks are not provided by the University but by individuals who make mistakes. – James K May 27 '22 at 21:37
  • @JamesK Yes. The Question bank has been provided by a third party not affiliated with the University. – tryingtobeastoic May 28 '22 at 05:19
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    Agreed with @RobbieGoodwin that this question is only about what the correct answer is, and the issue of the question banks is an unrelated tangent. The answer is clear enough that B is correct in most parts of the world, but that there's a good chance D is correct in Bangladeshi English. So, I'm removing comments about the question bank to chat – gotube Jun 10 '22 at 16:05
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – gotube Jun 10 '22 at 16:06

4 Answers4

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D is certainly not idiomatic in British English, nor I think American. B is the only natural choice.

It is possible that D is idiomatic in Bangla Deshi English: I don't know.

Colin Fine
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    I think one can avoid saying Bangladeshi English. That is not a variety of English. really. – Lambie May 23 '22 at 15:47
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    @Lambie: I know that I don't know enough to make such a statement. Wikipedia has an article on it, though I admint that it is undersourced, and lists only numbers as distinct. I know that Indian English more generally makes greater use of continuous tenses tthan other Englishes. – Colin Fine May 23 '22 at 16:04
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    D isn’t formally incorrect, but doesn’t sound idiomatic to me either (a native AmE speaker). – Davislor May 24 '22 at 03:36
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    As a native B-Eng, D does sound very much like the English I would expect to hear from someone from the Indian sub-continent. – Ken Y-N May 24 '22 at 06:31
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    From personal observation, I would say (D) is idiomatic in Indian and Bangladeshi English. And, yes, these absolutely are dialects of English deserving of as much respect as other variants. – Jack Aidley May 24 '22 at 12:25
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    @JackAidley Does anyone have these dialects of English as their native language? – StrangerToKindness May 24 '22 at 14:22
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    @StrangerToKindness - I am tempted not to respond because I firmly believe that it doesn't matter, but at least in the case of Indian English, absolutely. – Obie 2.0 May 24 '22 at 21:18
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    "nor I think American" - Mid-Atlantic AmEnglish speaker here. D sounds alien, not merely unidiomatic. It's so far from idiomatic I'd assume I misheard, and request they repeat themselves. B is the natural phrasing I (and every native AmEnglish speaker I've known) would use. – ShadowRanger May 24 '22 at 21:57
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – gotube May 25 '22 at 18:57
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    Southern/Midwestern US -- definitely alien. "I will have been knowing" is the sort of construction I entirely expect from my Indian or East-Asian coworkers, understandable but nothing a native speaker would ever say. – Darth Pseudonym May 26 '22 at 12:25
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Most verbs I can think of where “I will have been” doing something in the future perfect progressive are for actions that could be stopped and started over, resetting the clock, whether or not that has in fact happened.

So, for example, if I lived in Kalamazoo for ten years, then moved away, then moved back eleven months ago, I will have been living in Kalamazoo for one year next month, but I will have lived in Kalamazoo for eleven years. (This is not, however, an ironclad rule: people sometimes say something like, “I will have been living in Kalamazoo for eleven years, with some interruptions.”) If I moved to Kalamazoo for the first time eleven months ago, however, “I will have been living in Kalamazoo for a year,” and “I will have lived in Kalamazoo for a year,” would be synonyms.

So, examples of where the construction in D would be idiomatic (in American English) include “I will have been living with John for twenty years,” “I will have been fighting John for twenty years,” “I will have been avoiding John for twenty years,” “I will have been working with John for twenty years,” “I will have been hiding from John for twenty years,” and “I will have been dating John for twenty years; why do you say he’s afraid of commitment?”

Know doesn’t work that way; once you meet someone, you always “know” that person. (There is an expression, “I don’t even know him anymore,” but it isn’t taken literally, and if you asked that person, “Do you know John?” the answer would still be “Yes.”) An even simpler reason, though, might be that we don’t normally “*be knowing” someone, in any tense. Emotional states (such as hating and loving) are another set of examples that are not normally used as progressive verbs. (Again, in American English.)

Davislor
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    This is the right answer and should be accepted as such. – RedSonja May 24 '22 at 06:33
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    Regarding your last paragraph, (D) can only be the correct answer if we take "knowing" in the Biblical sense (as in, having sexual relations with) – Andy May 24 '22 at 20:41
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    @Andy If I saw “be knowing,” without a direct object, my first thought would be that “knowing” is being used as an adjective for savvy, shrewd, having inside knowledge. – Davislor May 24 '22 at 22:14
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    @Andy In the King James translation of the BIble, the form knowing is not actually used in that euphemistic sense (only knew). Knowing is used to introduce gerund phrases, such as “and slew them with the sword, my father David not knowing thereof,” “And Jesus knowing their thoughts said,” or most famously, “and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” – Davislor May 24 '22 at 22:24
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The correct phrasing is B. In US English, the verb "know" is not used in a continuous or ongoing (or active) sense in regard to people. We do not speak of "knowing" a person. ("I have been knowing him", or "It has been 20 years of knowing him" are not used.) You know someone or you don't. You have known her for a long time or a short time. You can say you knew him for many years. You can say you would like to know someone.

This is in contrast with the verb "live."

I have been living in Florida for more than 30 years, and I have known some people for that long."

"Know" in the continuous ("knowing") sense is used only in sentences that refer to use of knowledge: "Knowing how to prepare a meal is important for young adults, who otherwise have to spend a lot of money on dining out."

user8356
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Which meaning of know?

The more common use of 'to know' would mean that John is a person with whom I have been acquainted these past 20 years. In this case, (B), I will have known him, since the action of having come to know him was both begun and completed in the past.

However, there is a more idiomatic use of know, 'to know in the biblical sense', meaning to have had sexual relations with. If John and I are in an ongoing sexual relationship, then that should be expressed in a progressive tense: I first knew John 20 years ago, we have been knowing each other ever since, and next month I will have been knowing him for 20 years, thus (D). It would be the same tense as the more vulgar, 'Next month I will have been f***ing him for 20 years'.

Now, I hardly think this is what the university exam meant to imply - rather, it is a case of their incorrect grammar being coincidentally correct for a different meaning they did not intend.

Kirt
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    No, that doesn't work at all. "We have been knowing each other ever since": even in the Biblical sense, "know" is never used in the (present or past or past perfect) continuous. – TonyK May 24 '22 at 10:54
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    This sense is also considered archaic, almost never used except in the Bible unless you add the "in the biblical sense" qualifier. – Barmar May 24 '22 at 14:15
  • @Barmar It is certainly almost never used, which is why I say it is extremely unlikely to be the meaning the exam intended. I am simply pointing out that it is a grammatically correct idiomatic construction, since the other answers say that it is not. – Kirt May 24 '22 at 14:36
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    @TonyK "Never" is a strong claim. Cf., "As of this writing, to quote the Bible, we have been knowing each other for twelve years as a couple, and we continually reach new levels of showing each other what love is." in What's wrong with America – Kirt May 24 '22 at 14:50
  • @Kirt I might be wrong, but I think TonyK meant that its never used in that tense in the Bible itself. – mbomb007 May 24 '22 at 19:03
  • @mbomb007 Given that the Bible will could have used many prophetic future tenses I'm not sure it's an exhaustive compendium. – Andy May 24 '22 at 20:45
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    @Kirt - In addition to considering archaic biblical definitions, doth ye also speake in the Olde English of King James? Lest ye encounter another speaker? Olde English is just another dialect. Just as important as any other. – EllieK May 25 '22 at 12:44