You'd need to call someone to do these activities unless the internet exists

[macenglish]

Hiya,

I wanted to understand why the following sentence is incorrect. To me, it sounds very unnatural, but I'm not able to explain WHY:

In contrast, you would need to go to a mall or call someone to do these activities unless the Internet exists.

Why is this sentence incorrect, and what would be a good alternative? Can we use unless in another way, or is using unless not possible with this combination of ideas?

Thanks

 

[Rover_KE]

Welcome to the forum, macenglish.

Please correct your Current Location in your profile. I don't believe you're in Colombia for a start.

Click Settings and then Edit Profile.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hiya.

I wanted to understand why the following sentence is incorrect. To me, it sounds very unnatural, but I'm not able to explain WHY:

In contrast, you would need to go to a mall or call someone to do these activities [STRIKE]unless[/STRIKE] if the Internet [STRIKE]exists[/STRIKE] didn't exist.

Why is this sentence incorrect, and what would be a good alternative? Can we use "unless" in another way, or is using "unless" not possible with this combination of ideas?

Thanks.

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

The original is not grammatical. In this context, with "would ..." in the first clause, we need "if ..." in the second.

 

[jutfrank]

I can't see there's anything wrong logically. Perhaps the use of exists sounds unnatural to you to talk about there being internet coverage, which it does to me too.

Using unless expresses the assumed condition that there isn't internet coverage. There's nothing wrong with that, in the right context. Logically, it's like saying:

You need to do A unless condition B applies (in which case you don't need to do A, or you need to do C)

Grammatically, one might argue that since it appears to be on the surface a hypothetical unreal conditional, the verb tense of the verb ought to be existed, not exists. However, I'm not sure that's what the speaker actually means. Can you give us the context in which you heard/saw this sentence?