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Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
Hi,
Herewith, I`d like to pick up an issue formerly touched on in passing. Since it had but a marginal existence there, I deem it recommendable to establish it as a thread of its own. Let me come down to brass tacks.
The other day a colleague of mine spoke of an American student of his who always uses a future tense in a temporal clause justifying himself by asserting that this is the common way to do it in the US now.
E.g.: As soon as / when I will arrive, IŽll call you up.
What do the American members make of this assertion?
Hucky
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Re: Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
An American would say:
As soon as I arrive, I'll call you.
I'll = I will
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Re: Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
Dear susiedgg,
To start with, thank you so much!
Properly, I had expected a reply like yours, or rather hoped for it.
What, then, would an American speaker make of someone who uses the will-future in a temporal or conditional clause? Would for instance an English teacher or any other teacher at an American High School tolerate such a construction instead of correcting him?
Hucky
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not a teacher
Or "When I arrive" or "After I arrive". Still no call for "will" in the first part of that sentence. "Will" in the second, main part of the sentence is enough.
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Re: Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
No English teacher in America would tolerate "when I will arrive, IŽll call you up."
Not only is it grammatically incorrect, it is never heard. It's not slang, it's not some cult argot, it is just plain wrong. I am as certain of this as I am of anything.
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Re: Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
*Not a teacher.
You can't use future tenses in temporal clauses. Period.
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Re: Will you reply if I will ask you to do so?
Thanks so much to all of you! But my special thanks go to probus. Your statements have been very illuminating, exactly what I was after.
Cheerio!
Hucky
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