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今、来たところなので、まだその話は、聞いていません。 => "Because I came around just now, I don't hear that story yet."

I'm confused because in the subclause 今、来たところなので there is past tense, and in the main clause there is present tense. I know that in japanese it's a bit difficult with tenses for us and that they don't have the same understanding about tenses like we have in english etc.. But since 聞く doesn't seem to represent the result of "hearing", e.g. "knowing" http://jisho.org/search/kiku I have trouble interpreting this construction.

Narktor
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    まだその話は、聞いていません。 => ... I don't hear that story yet ← I haven't heard it yet じゃないんですかね・・・ – chocolate May 15 '17 at 07:42

2 Answers2

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This 聞いていません does not use the past tense, but it uses ～ている, which denotes the continuation of a state that was caused by an action in the past. In English this is expressed using the present perfect aspect.

Therefore the most literal translation is not "I don't hear" nor "I didn't hear" but:

まだその話は、聞いていません。
I haven't heard that story yet.

See:

naruto
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It is pretty much the same as in English.

I just arrived now, so I am not aware of what's going on.(PAST/PRESENT)

OR

I just got here, so I didn't hear about it yet.(PAST/PAST)

There are many ways to say what you want.

The sentence is in the present, but 来たところ is in the past because it explains that his action of arriving here is already over, but the action of hearing the story has yet to come, so not in the past.

Is is also possible to have the verb to hear in the past tense too if you want to put emphasis on the fact that you didn't hear it until now.

この話は、聞かなかった

stack reader
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  • Ok, I was just irritated because as I said, there is no entry on jisho.org that 聞く can have the meaning "to know/to be aware of" etc.. – Narktor May 15 '17 at 07:32
  • @Narktor It does not directly mean to be aware of. It is just implied. Hearing about something means you now know about that thing. In jisho.org there is one description of 聞く that do work though: 5. to learn of; to hear about​ – stack reader May 15 '17 at 07:48