3rd conditional?

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Danman

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I wrote:
"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German."

Now my english teacher corrected it to "you had to"

But, I'm talking about the future not the past.


Secondly,
is it: I read some books at the weekend.

or
I read some books this weekend.

Or is it just a personal preference? British english confuses the heck out of me. :p
 

5jj

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I wrote:
"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German."

Now my [STRIKE]e[/STRIKE] English teacher corrected it to "you had to"

But, I'm talking about the future not the past.

We are using the so-called past tense here to indicate remoteness from reality
.

The reality is 'You have to go', and this is not the case in an imagined situation.


Secondly,
is it: I read some books at the weekend.

or
I read some books this weekend.

Or is it just a personal preference?YES
5
 

corum

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I wrote:
"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German."

Now my english teacher corrected it to "you had to"

But, I'm talking about the future not the past.

Past tense refers to future time. Your teacher is correct.


Secondly,
is it: I read some books at the weekend.

or
I read some books this weekend.

Or is it just a personal preference? British english confuses the heck out of me. :p
They mean the same thing.

British english confuses the heck out of me. :p
You do not say that! :)
 

Danman

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Evidently a lot of Americans get that wrong, haha. :-D

I've never been corrected on that (and that after 2 years of college).

edit: Say what? ... "I'm moving house" is confusing! :p
 

5jj

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Past tense refers to future time. Your teacher is correct.

The teacher is indeed correct, but the statement, "Past tense refers to future time," could be a little confusing.

The past tense can distance a situation in:

vividness/time:
A nurse walks into a room and...
A nurse walked into a room and ...

directness:
I wonder if you have a moment?
I wondered if you had a moment?

reality/factuality
The children are here.
I wish the children were here.
 

5jj

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Danman: British english confuses the heck out of me.

You do not say that! :)
Why not? It confuses the heck out of me sometimes and I've been speaking it for over sixty years and teaching it for over forty.

I accept that 'confuse the heck out of' is a rather informal way of expressing the thought.
 

corum

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The teacher is indeed correct, but the statement, "Past tense refers to future time," could be a little confusing.

The past tense can distance a situation in:

vividness/time:
A nurse walks into a room and...
A nurse walked into a room and ...

directness:
I wonder if you have a moment?
I wondered if you had a moment?

reality/factuality
The children are here.
I wish the children were here.

Thanks for the lesson. :up:
I thought I was in your bad books. Where am I? ;-)
 

5jj

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Thanks for the lesson. :up:
I thought I was in your bad books. Where am I? ;-)
Along with any other poster when you give helpful answers to questions:).

Incidentally, Danman, I should have added to my last post that I was not saying that Corum was wrong. The so-called past tense can refer to the future, and frequently does in so-called 2nd conditional sentences such as:

It would be a miracle if he finished by next week.

I simply felt that the words "Past tense refers to future time," might be interpreted, incorrectly, by some readers as a general rule.
 

corum

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Along with any other poster when you give helpful answers to questions

I am bending over backwards to do my best, but what happens if I am wrong next time? Will you hate me? Is it not the good intentions that count when you devote your time to sorting out other people's problems?
 

5jj

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We had better stay on-topic or the moderators will, rightly, ask us to to do so.
 

Pedroski

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What is all this strange talk about past tense to indicate future? You are dealing with the conditional here, a hyothetical situation introduced by the word 'imagine': what you imagine has not happened,

"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German." There is nothing wrong with this sentence. 'had to' = 'müsstest' 'would' = 'würdest'. That is the difference.
Stell dir vor, du müsstest in ein anderes Land ziehen und Deutsch lernen. Just by looking at the verb form in the translation, you can easily see that you are dealing with the Konjunktiv II. There are no past tense verbs in your sentence. 'ẃould' is the past subjunctive of 'will'.
 

5jj

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What is all this strange talk about past tense to indicate future? You are dealing with the conditional here, a hyothetical situation introduced by the word 'imagine': what you imagine has not happened,
Well, we tend to use the word 'conditional' of utterances containing such expressions as 'if', 'unless', 'providing', etc. The utterance we are discussing is certainly hypothetical; it is not conditional.

"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German." There is nothing wrong with this sentence.
There is nothing catstrophically wrong with it. It's just that 'Imagine you had to' is correct. If Danman were taking a Cambridge exam, he might lose a point if he used the first construction.

'had to' = 'müsstest' 'would' = 'würdest'. That is the difference.
It matters not a jot what happens in another language. We are talking about what happens in English.

Stell dir vor, du müsstest in ein anderes Land ziehen und Deutsch lernen. Just by looking at the verb form in the translation, you can easily see that you are dealing with the Konjunktiv II.
The English may well be rendered by the 'Konjunktiv II' in German. That is irrelevant.

There are no past tense verbs in your sentence.
:-(' You are simply wrong. 'had' is a past tense form. You might wish to call it a 'past subjunctive', but it's still a past tense form.

ẃould' is the past subjunctive of 'will'.
So, even by your analysis, it's a past tense form:roll:. Some modal constructions may well be rendered by subjunctive forms in other languages; it's not particularly helpful to think of them as subjunctive in English.
5
 

philo2009

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I wrote:
"Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German."

Now my english teacher corrected it to "you had to"

But, I'm talking about the future not the past.

Actually, your sentence is possible, but, lacking an appropriate time adverbial, highly unnatural (leading to your teacher's certainly well-meant correction).

If you had said something like

Imagine that, having recently got a job in Berlin, you would have to leave for Germany within a few weeks.

there would have been no problem.
 
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Tdol

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'ẃould' is the past subjunctive of 'will'.

That is not a matter of fact but opinion and should be stated as such- many people would interpret it differently.
 
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Pedroski

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Oh yeah, you can use 'would' as the simple past of 'will', but not when you are talking about hypothetical situations, which, being such, have not happened, and can therefore not be located in past time. An example of such a sentence would be: 'Imagine you would have to go to another country and learn German.' 'Imagine' already says: this has not happened.

If you can locate this statement as something that happened somewhere in the past, then I should like to see what you call a possible future event, and how you would phrase a description of it! There is no matter of opinion here: an event that has not occurred is not the same as an event that has occurred. The former is irreal, the latter is past tense.

'would' in the sentence in question is a subjunctive. I find it strange that you should even try to dispute this, but maybe you have some kind of argument to put forward. I look forward to hearing it!
 

5jj

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'would' in the sentence in question is a subjunctive. I find it strange that you should even try to dispute this, but maybe you have some kind of argument to put forward. I look forward to hearing it!
This has been discussed so often and in so many places that it would be tedious to start up again here. There are opinions on both sides, and nobody can 'prove' that something is or is not a subjunctive - the word itself is only a label.

Tdol's words appear reasonable: "That is not a matter of fact but opinion and should be stated as such".
 

Pedroski

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I disagree. You wish to say that a hypothetical situation can be described as something that 'happened' and that it 'happened' in the past, which is why past tense verb forms are used. By the same logic, because I use the word 'can' in 'I can' it must always mean I am putting things in tins, purely and simply because it is written the same as 'can'. You will, I hope agree, that this is not so, and that to try to describe the subjunctive as a form of past tense, because it is written the same, is nonsense.
 
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