<< I read that the preterite is apparently dying out in normal speech but is mainly used as a literary tense similar to the situation with French. Is this correct, and do you think this could be because of influence from Frnech or it the other way round, that German influenced French to drop the preterite tense? >>
-- This is not quite correct. Simple preterite is absolutely dead in spoken French (since its uses are covered by present perfect) but "imperfect" is widely used and equates, depending on the context, English preterite or progressive past.
Hence:
. J'ai pensé
. I have thought / I thought
. Ich habe gedacht
. Je pensais
. I thought / I was thinking
. [ Ich dachte ]
Modern use of past tenses in everyday German tends to be over-simplified IMHO (with the additional drawback that German present perfect leads to more intricate clause constructions!).
-- This is not quite correct. Simple preterite is absolutely dead in spoken French (since its uses are covered by present perfect) but "imperfect" is widely used and equates, depending on the context, English preterite or progressive past.
Hence:
. J'ai pensé
. I have thought / I thought
. Ich habe gedacht
. Je pensais
. I thought / I was thinking
. [ Ich dachte ]
Modern use of past tenses in everyday German tends to be over-simplified IMHO (with the additional drawback that German present perfect leads to more intricate clause constructions!).