In Present tenses^x, Modals^x, Direct speech^x

Ellisa: This is a very long passage, and your other post seems to be even longer. The editor at this web site makes it difficult to make corrections to long passages. Also, many teachers do not want to devote a long time working on a single post. If you post only one paragraph at a time, then...

Let us recast the sentence in direct speech, that is, you are speaking to Mark, "When you arrive (simple present tense is most suitable here - I wonder you can use any other tense), we shall/will go out for dinner."When you turn that into an indirect speech, the sentence will become,...

CGEL: Conversion to indirect reported speech not a matter of grammatical rule There is a second respect in which we must beware of being misled by the traditonal account associating backshift with indirect reported speech. Converting into indirect reprted speech, however, is not a matter of...

I don't really understand the question either... Konstantin, you're referring to the Conditional with your German example. Indirect speech in German works differently as the Conjunctive has to be used in formal German, which however, can be replaced by the Conditional (would+infinitive). In...