English Original Sentence
You hurt my feelings.
I’m curious: at first glance, do native English speakers read the English sentence as past or present tense?
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Definitely past tense.
If talking to the person in the moment, it would be “you are hurting my feelings”.
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I have actually used it both present and past tho’ it came out as “Hey, don’t hurt my feelings” in the present moment, but more in fun.
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Yes, I agree that other sentences incorporating that phrase could be read in the present tense, or even anticipate a future event.
“When you say that, you hurt my feelings”.
However, if the sentence is just “you hurt my feelings”, then for me at least that suggests only something that happened in the past.
English is odd isn’t it? 
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Sono d’accordo. You’re totally like so right yeah! Seriously, I do agree.
How people learn English is beyond me, perhaps that’s why I love Italian so much - a few quirks and congiuntivo but al fine del giorno, ah you know, what I mean.
I smiled the other day when I heard a footie pundit say that the Manager had “set a president by not playing Whoever” in goal 
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My Latin (and Ancient Greek) teacher used to say “the most difficult thing in Latin is the grammar and the most difficult thing in English is the absence of grammar” (because you have to find other ways to express yourself nuanced). As a German I think it is quite easy to learn the very basics in English, which makes it so popular for world wide communication, but is extremely difficult and never-ending to learn the nuances - a problem I encounter every day here on clozemaster (and just at this moment 
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I might add that form my German point of view English is also an extremely laconic language and exactly because of that some of the most heartbreaking poetry and prose has been written in English.
My Italian is far to basic to compare it, but my first impression is that it is like Latin adapted to fast talking. I always wondered how Latin speakers managed to construct Latin sentences automatically and it seems to me that Italian is the answer to that problem.
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Ciao @anon94972132 I enjoyed reading your thinking here, and you’re so right about “nuances” in English. In our Italian club it is sometimes difficult to explain the humour or subtle nuance of a sentence. We in turn learn that “Un amico grande” is quite different to “Un grande amico” - just a brief example of nuance in Italian. Then I discover that some Swahili sentences have the same construction as Italian, totally fascinating.
Wish I’d started learning a lot sooner! 
Bye…
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