Will vs going to

[olegv]

Please look at the sentence below.

Oh dear, I've broken the vase

There are three choices, and one should opt two correct ones.

A What will your mother say?
B What is your mother going to say?
C What is your mother saying?


Can you please have a look at my brief analysis and confirm whether I am right or wrong. Many thanks.

A is likely to be correct and can be seen as the mother's sponteneous decision (let's imagine that she is in the mioddle of the event and on the point of saying.

"Will" is the context can also be seen as the mother's strong willingness to comment the situation while observing the process or when she knows the incident.

B - is possible and can be seen as the guess of mother's intention.

C - does not work as it is not in line with the context and grammatically unclear.

 

[Rover_KE]

You are right.

Rover

 

[Unwritten]

Oh dear, I've broken the vase

I have a question .. :-?

The sentence above is in the present perfect tense, which means it happened earlier that I`ve broken the vase, but the effect still exists, right?

So why cannot we say the 3rd option is correct? The mother might give her opinion about it in the present time, what do you think?

 

[SoothingDave]

A or B works for me.

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm going to regret this, I know, but I'm going to say (as I always do) that A and B are both possible and, to me, mean exactly the same thing. No-one can know exactly what the mother is going to say as it hasn't happened yet so A and B are both guesses.

C makes no sense because if the two speakers were in the same room as the mother, and the mother was speaking, the second person would have no reason to say "What is your mother saying?" because they would be able to hear what she was saying. In a very unlikely situation, I suppose the mother could be speaking a foreign language and could be reacting to the broken vase in that language, which the second speaker is unable to understand. That might lead them to say to the person who broke the vase "What is your mother saying?" but that is a really convoluted situation!

 

[olegv]

Thank you. Please have a look at the following three sentences going immediately after the underlying sentence.

We've run out of fuel.

(A) - What will we do nowl?
(B) - What do we do now?
(C) - What are we going to do now?

The task is again to choose two correct options.

(A) Appears to be an immediate reaction to what what has happened.
(C) is the plan

The is no any room for B - Correct? Thanks.

 

[emsr2d2]

In BrE, you'll hear all three. I use/hear B more often than A, but C is the most common for me.

 

[olegv]

Thank you. Thus, even if B seems to be present simple (at least structually), it conveys the idea of the future tense. Or it is said to be an idiomatic expression and it makes no sence to analyse it further and just to remember in similar contexts? Thank you.

 

[Tdol]

The mother might give her opinion about it in the present time, what do you think?

In which case, why ask the question- if the mother is there giving her opinion, the speaker could just listen. The words Oh dear suggest it has just happened, so the most logical assumption is that the mother isn't there and doesn't know about it yet.

 

[5jj]

Thus, even if B seems to be present simple (at least structually), it conveys the idea of the future tense.

B does not just seem to be the present simple, it is the present simple. As in many languages, present tenses in English can, in some contexts, have reference to future time.