We have three kinds of past:
I had a car / I used to have a car / I was having a car.
- What is the difference in your understanding of the meaning of these three sentences?
-
As I understand we have:
non-action verbs: have, think, want, live …
action verbs: run, read, listen, move, jump …
And then how do you understand the meaning of phrases like 'used to have' or 'used to think', 'used to live'?
- And high question: Are past simple and 'used to' interchangeable?
"I lived in London" and "I used to live in London." What is the difference? My guess is that the difference is in the period of time of living. And if this is true, from what period of time of a non-action verb can I use 'used to'?
Best Answer
In some situation or event in the past, you had a car. You may or may not have a car now.
This emphasizes the fact you don't have a car now.
For have, this doesn't work in the sense of "possess". The reader/listener will assume you mean "consume" (in the sense of I was having dinner) and will laugh at you unless context is allowing you to be something that eats a car, which is not likely.
For other verbs - this is past progressive tense, and makes the action apply over a duration of time in the past - the typical reason for this construct is that you want to relate another event that happens in the middle of this duration, or interrupts the duration.
Simple past simply says something happened and doesn't imply that it happened over any stretch of time.
Used to X means you don't have or do X now, and typically (but not always) implies that you had or done X a long time ago.