Search results for 'tag:Jokes tag:Conditionals' matching tags 'Jokes' and 'Conditionals'

Re: ride with me

Grammar Geek — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:33:56 GMT

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 "If + past tense, would/should/etc + past tense". In your sentence, "if" is dropped and, in fact, it sounds more natural than with "if" included (if possible).

I had a typo - driver, not drive.

Anyway, I was making a little joke because it said no one can ride with the driver. I'm not good with the types of conditionals, but you can rephrase my sentence as "If the driver was hired to be a chauffeur, it would be an inefficient use of company assets." Does that help?

Re: The strange case of the hidden conditional.

CalifJim — Fri, 19 May 2006 21:54:57 GMT

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 must use the modal "will") that it really has no future*. ()

CJ

*Also a joke. "to have no future" is an idiom for "will never amount to anything", "will never be a success".

Re: The strange case of the hidden conditional.

Old Eladio — Fri, 19 May 2006 21:43:04 GMT

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 psychiatrist as fast as I can!

It's just a joke. Thinking more deeply than usual and being a little unconventional, you are so right.....!

Thanks, again.

Eladio

Re: A Baffling Conditional Sentence

Clive — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 19:57:58 GMT

Hi,

but what you mean by telling it depends upon the pedestrian.If you make it clear,Ä±'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 accidentally hit the Queen of England, you'll get into trouble.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: "So long as" vs. "as long as"

Clive — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 01:34:52 GMT

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 the conditional sense, has just gotten corrupted into another little two-letter word?

So long, Clive (that's a little joke)

Walter M. Schirra Jr

paco2004 — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 08:21:03 GMT

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 and Apollo 7. He left NASA and the Navy in 1969 when there were no new missions coming his way. "I didn't want to be a potted palm," he says. He worked at an oil and gas company before forming his own environmental company, which he then sold, and did stints as an executive at Johns-Manville and Kimberly-Clark.

Now retired, the 75-year-old Schirra has written two books -- "Schirra's Space" and "From Wildcats to Tomcats" (the latter about naval aviation) -- and still makes speeches and public appearances. He was at Knott's Berry Farm near Los Angeles recently for the inauguration of a ride called "The Scream Machine." He lives in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and has a second home on Kauai, Hawaii. His hobbies including fishing, boating and golf.

Never at a loss for one-liners, Schirra has two regarding Glenn's return to space: "One, I'm not that old. Two, I don't need the flight time." Would he go back into space himself? "Not unless I could fly it," he says. "I'm not interested in sitting in back."

What I feel somehow difficult to get is the last paragraph. As for the first sentence, I take it as "Being never at a loss for one-liners (=jokes), Schirra has two (one-liners) regarding Glenn's return to space". Am I right? What does mean "Not unless I could fly it"? Is it an ellipsis of "He would not go into the space himself unless I could fly it"? Can we use an "unless"-clause in a second type of conditional? What does this "it" stand for? Is it "return to space"?

paco