My mother had been cooking...

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subhajit123

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Is the following sentence structured grammatically?

1- My mother had been cooking since 6 o'clock before he left for the office.
 

subhajit123

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It would be just about possible with 'when' rather than 'before' but I think it's a sentence that no native speaker would produce.

How will you structure this? :)
 

teechar

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The sentence is somewhat unclear. Who is "he"? Can you write the sequence of events in point form please?
 

Rover_KE

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We need to know who 'he' is, unless you meant to write 'she'.
 

andrewg927

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"She" would be a lot more natural without further context.
 

subhajit123

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We need to know who 'he' is, unless you meant to write 'she'.

Here he means my dad. Sorry I should have written my dad instead.:up:
 

emsr2d2

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It's still somewhat unnatural for the reasons Piscean stated in post #6. However, it is possible to combine those three facts into a more natural sentence.

By the time my dad left for work at 8am, my mum had already been up and cooking for two hours.
 
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