Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Candles]

When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears COME from my eyes.
OR:
When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears CAME from my eyes.

THANK YOU
_________________
There's life, there's hope!

[dragn]

Hi Candles,

The second sentence When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears CAME from my eyes is wrong. You don't need two past tense verbs there (felt/came).

The first sentence When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears COME from my eyes is...borderline. In other words, it's not screamingly wrong, but I doubt if many native speakers would say it that way. If you want to use the preposition from, it seems more natural to me to use the continuous:

When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears coming from my eyes.

That's a small improvement, but a lot of Americans would probably say this:

When they raised my country's flag, I felt tears come to my eyes.

Or just this:

When they raised my country's flag, tears came to my eyes.

Of course, there are numerous variations on this theme:

When they raised my country's flag,...

...my eyes filled with tears.
...my eyes welled up with tears.
...tears ran down my face/cheeks.
...I was moved to tears.
...I cried like a baby.

...and so on.

dragn