By Jokes, Conditionals

New2grammar wrote: GG, is this a Type 2 Conditional sentence, generally speaking? Let's hope the driver in question was not hired to be a chauffeur or that would be a very inefficient use of company assets. I believe to be Type 2 Conditional, a sentence does not necessarily have to follow...

Actually this division into two tenses (Past and Non-past) is not at all unconventional. Many linguists and writers on language have observed of English (especially since we use the present to express the future so often, and since we cannot express the future with a grammatical ending, but...

Thanks a lot CJ. I thoght that "that hidden conditional" was a zero in the past, but I was not sure at all. You wrote: In a way, English only has two tenses: Past and Non-Past. How about calling this an Unreal Non-Past situation? Do you know what, after this pronouncement, I'll go to the...

Hi, but what you mean by telling it depends upon the pedestrian.If you make it clear,ı'd like to be more happy. Don't worry about it, it was just a little joke. The humorous suggestion was that, for example, if you are in a car and you accidentally hit a grammarian, no-one will care, but if you...

Hi, For conditionals, I'm tempted to suggest that so long as .... is 'incorrect'. Just don't ask me why. But as evidence, I could point out that Swan's Practical English Usage 1994 (sections 76 and 310) doesn't seem even to mention 'so long as'. Perhaps it's a case where 'as', used in...

I found an article about ex-astronaut Schirra in a page from CNN. Walter M. Schirra Jr. Schirra in his Mercury pressure suit with model of Mercury spacecraft behind him. The jocular Schirra logged more time in space than any of the other Mercury seven -- 295 hours -- aboard Mercury 8, Gemini 6...