Kolridg
Junior Member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2016
- Member Type
- Native Language
- Russian
- Home Country
- Russian Federation
- Current Location
- Russian Federation
I am thinking how to justify my good appetite to my family members in English in situation where I have eaten whole chicken. I would try to play this dialogue in the next way:
– Why did you eat whole chicken having not left anything for others?
– Well, it lay in the pan for all day and nobody [was eating it] [nobody has eaten a piece], so I figured that nobody wanted it at all.
I doubt about what to choose among the two phrases in the square brackets. I think "nobody has eaten a piece" must be definitely correct but it sounds like from some movie or show on TV. I guess in informal dialogue we would probaly say "and nobody was eating it", but how much is that correct? Why is "it layed for all day" in the simple past, and "nobody was eating it" is in the past continuos? Maybe because the full phrase must be "and I haven't seen that anybody was eating it" and we just omit "and I haven't seen" in the speech?
– Why did you eat whole chicken having not left anything for others?
– Well, it lay in the pan for all day and nobody [was eating it] [nobody has eaten a piece], so I figured that nobody wanted it at all.
I doubt about what to choose among the two phrases in the square brackets. I think "nobody has eaten a piece" must be definitely correct but it sounds like from some movie or show on TV. I guess in informal dialogue we would probaly say "and nobody was eating it", but how much is that correct? Why is "it layed for all day" in the simple past, and "nobody was eating it" is in the past continuos? Maybe because the full phrase must be "and I haven't seen that anybody was eating it" and we just omit "and I haven't seen" in the speech?
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