My girlfriend and I saw a meme on Instagram of a house surrounded by treadmills titled "How to survive the Zombie apocalypse". After seeing it, my girlfriend said "I don't think this would work; they would all stack on one another", and then she asked me whether "they would stack on one another" is correct, and I couldn't answer her question because I got confused myself, being a non-native speaker. I would've said "they would all stack up on top of each other" but I'm not sure….
Learn English – Stack up on each other or stack on one another
word-usage
Related Solutions
Addressing your specific questions:
'Can you imagine how dirty it gets over time?'
When people talk informally, they are often a little sloppy. The present tense would be the perfect choice to state a generalization or natural law such as:
'White gets dirty over time.'
This idea was close enough for the speaker. Someone who likes to be more precise might say, instead, "Can you imagine how dirty it would get over time [if we bought the white pillow]?" But you might not enjoy living with someone who uses English precisely all the time. Such people tend to be nitpicky.
'The grease from your fingers will burn into the bulb and then it breaks.'
Here, two ideas have been spliced together into one sentence.
First idea: "[If you touch the bulb with your fingers] the grease from your fingers will burn into the bulb."
Second idea: "When that happens, i.e. when you touch the bulb with your fingers, the bulb breaks."
This is another example of the simple present being used for a generalization or natural law. And again, in a situation of informal speech you caught the speaker being a little sloppy.
'I hope it goes away overnight.'
I don't know how the English grammar experts would view this (if you want to know, you could ask over at ELU SE), but I will share how I see this example. My other primary language is Spanish, which has a subjunctive. English has one too, but people don't think about it much. In Spanish you really can't get away without thinking about it. In Spanish, this would be
Espero que se quite para mañana.
("se quite" is conjugated in the subjunctive)
I see the English sentence the same way -- I see goes away as the present subjunctive, which happens to be conjugated the same as the simple present.
Your questions were good, and you've done some careful listening and recording of what you've heard.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out a small but important misuse of the simple present tense in your question:
You wrote: I moved from Germany to California and since I'm here I hear people use the simple present....
Expressions beginning with "since" are notoriously easy to get tripped up on.
Better: I moved from Germany to California and since I've been here I've heard people use the simple present....
Or: I'm from Germany. Here in California I hear people use the simple present....
The phrase 'move against each other ' literally means they come in contact and collide with each other so as to create an earthquake.
The word against may be the confusion, but look at the below definition (taken from Google):
in or into physical contact with (something), so as to be supported by or collide with it.
"she stood with her back against the door"
synonyms:touching, in contact with, close up to, up against, abutting, on, adjacent to
"she leaned against the wall"
The same meaning is applied in the example given.
Best Answer
Nothing you or your girlfriend said is necessarily wrong, but the most idiomatic way to say it would be the above.