>>>>>>But "been frequenting" is past, right?
>>>>>
>>>>>No, "I have been frequenting" suggests that I'm still doing it, you see.
>>>>>"I frequented that club in my twenties" is in the past
>>>>
>>>>This is the shift that I quite often don't get - "I have been frequenting" sounds like past to me.
>>>
>>>Is that because other euro lang's use the "I have verbed" construct to denote a one-off action/happening?
>>>

>>>e.g. in French "J'ai parle avec lui" (I have spoken with him) = "I spoke to him"
>>>     in German "Ich habe mit Ihm gesprochen"
>>>

>>
>>"have" is not an auxiliary verb in Slavic languages at all. It's a completely Western thing. The auxiliary verbs are "to be" (in its various forms) for most of the tenses that need it (most of the present and past tenses don't, but the simple past and conditional future do) and "will" for future. So my tense mapping may be one-off, but for different reasons.
>>
>>>In your above case you're even making it more complex by using the continuous. If you'd said "I've frequented the place for years" it'd suggest that it's something you do regularly, and continue to do so. Not a lot of difference really.
>>>
>>>If you said "I frequented the place for years" or "I used to frequent ..." it suggests something you don't do (or aren't doing) anymore -the imperfect tense (don't ask me how perfection comes into it)
>>>
>>>"I had frequented ..." - something I used to do before the time to which I'm referring: "Last week I visited the museum. I had not visited it for years"
>>
>>Now these all make sense and fit nicely with what I learned of English grammar long ago. It's just that "I have been ***ing" somehow implies that I'm still doing it that doesn't.

I agree.