[Grammar] I had had my lunch

[Rickyp]

Dear teacher,
Some English teacher say that we never use past form of verbs twice in a sentence but i have heard the people saying "i had had my lunch" where we can find two past verbs. So is this the correct form of sentence?
Need some help, thanks.

 

[emsr2d2]

[STRIKE]Dear teacher,[/STRIKE] Unnecessary. Just say "Hello".
Some English teachers say that we never use the past form of verbs twice in a sentence but I have heard [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] people [STRIKE]saying[/STRIKE] say "I had had my lunch", [strike]where[/strike] in which we can find two past verbs. So is this the correct form of the sentence?
I need some help. Thanks.

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

That sentence doesn't use "two past verbs". It uses the tense called the "past perfect".

I have (present simple)
I had (past simple)
I have had (present perfect)
I had had (past perfect)

Have you studied all those tenses yet?

Please note that I have changed your thread title. Titles should include some/all of the words/phrases you are querying, and should be unique to the specific thread they are attached to.

Note my corrections to your post above too. Remember to capitalise the word "I" (first person singular pronoun) each time you write/type it.

 

[Tdol]

Your teacher was probably referring to questions and negatives with the auxiliary verb did in the past tense:

Did you go? :tick:
Did you went? :cross:
I didn't see them. :tick:
I didn't saw them. :cross:

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Hello, Rickyp:

In my opinion, it is not accurate to call "had had" two past verbs.

The first "had" IS the past of "have" and is being used as an auxiliary (helping verb), but the second "had" is the past participle of "have."

"I had had my lunch before you came to my house."

a. Some native speakers just leave out the first "had," for we understand the meaning with no problem.
b. Some native speakers want to follow the rule, so they do use the past perfect "had had," but it sounds more natural to many speakers if they use a contraction.

i. I'd had lunch [at 12:15 p.m.] before you came to my house [at 1:00 p.m.].

 

[GoesStation]

Native speakers contract the first had except when they want to emphasize their statement. I had had lunch when she arrived but I ate a little more to keep her company. This is equivalent to the emphatic did in the simple past.

 

[YAMATO2201]

I had had lunch when she arrived but I ate a little more to keep her company.

Is the first had pronounced in its strong form?

 

[emsr2d2]

If you want to give the emphasis mentioned in GoesStation's post, yes, the stress needs to come on the first had. Here's an example dialogue:

Sherry: What happened to that skirt you bought on Tuesday morning?
Kelly: I didn't buy a skirt on Tuesday morning.
Sherry: Yes you did. We went shopping together.
Kelly: No, that was Tuesday afternoon.
Sherry: It can't have been. We'd only had breakfast.
Kelly: No, we'd had lunch.
Sherry: I'm sure you're wrong.
Kelly: I'm not wrong. Lunch was soup and toast.
Sherry: I don't remember that at all. I'm sure we hadn't had lunch.
Kelly: Oh, for goodness' sake. Well, I don't know about you but I had had lunch. I remember spilling tomato soup down my top and I had to go and change before we went shopping.
Sherry: Oh, yes. You're right!

 

[GoesStation]

Is the first had pronounced in its strong form?

Yes. I set it in bold to indicate that. Unfortunately I also use bold on the forum to highlight words of interest, so its use as a stress indicator isn't clear.