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Nice fellow?

5 replies
:
So this was what happened when I was in Dubai. I was walking home from dinner and on my way back I met this guy. He seemed like a nice fellow so I decided to strike up a conversation with him. And I asked him if he was from around here/And I ask him if he is from around here.

Please pick the right last sentence for me. Thanks.

ThankS!
Senior Member4,082
Anonymous:
Don't start a sentence with the word "and." In this case, you would say "He seemed like a nice fellow, so I decided to strike up a conversation with him. I asked him if he was from around here." You would choose the past tense here because all information leading up to that point is being expressed in the past tense.
Anonymous:
If he was is correct (tense agreement).
The question was "Are you from here?".
If you use quotations marks around the question, the tenses remain unchanged. I asked "Are you from here?"

If you do not use quotations, both sentences have to be in the same tense if they are referring to the same time frame.
(so, your question "Are you from here?", in indirect form becomes "I ask if you are from here." (both verbs in present tense). When you change the tense of ask to past tense, you must change the tense of "to be" to the past tense as well.
Anonymous:
Hey, the first sentence is correct as you are mentioning a fact that you lived in the past "And I asked him if he was..."
:
And I asked him if he was from around here.

It is perfectly OK to begin a sentence with the conjunctions and, but, yet, or, etc.
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:
AnonymousIf he was is correct (tense agreement).The question was "Are you from here?". If you use quotations marks around the question, the tenses remain unchanged. I asked "Are you from here?" If you do not use quotations, both sentences have to be in the same tense if they are referring to the same time frame.(so, your question "Are you from here?", in indirect form becomes "I ask if you are from here." (both verbs in present tense). When you change the tense of ask to past tense, you must change the tense of "to be" to the past tense as well.
What if I'm speaking to someone? Which way of speaking is the more common way when telling someone about a personal situation.
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