Tag: The Unreal Past

Use of relative forms of verbs to express hypotheses or theory making, as in IF I WERE YOU NOW, the Past form “were” does not refer to the Past.

10.1. Grammar Unreal or Real time

No group and no Government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt | If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success… ― Calvin Coolidge ■More

Chapter 10. Form relativity galore

If we guess or suppose, Past forms refer to the Present, and Present forms refer to the Future. It is only the anchored Past to remain in the grammatical Past. The matter is similar in many languages: if I was, si j’étais, gdybym był/a, если бы я был/а, wäre ich.
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