By Tenses, Idioms

Are they wrong since the modal usages lack the fundamental conditional uses of the modals 'would' and 'could'? Not sure what you're asking. The correct sequence of tenses applies to conditionals as well as to non-conditionals. 1. We are all watching in a sort of stunned...

They certainly seem correct to me. Perhaps it's the idiom happen to that's bothering you.If you happen to have money = If, by chance, it turns out that you have money CJ

"You're lucky the cops didn't pick you up for drunk driving." It just occured to me that this might be considered an idiom. Perhaps someone can verify. It's really a special case. The "lucky" part is present tense, but the momentary luck applies to a (recent)...

You're too fast for me. You beat my edit again. I was going to add, "in front of you" may be ambiguous. I was thinking of it as which window? The window in front of you. But in the original sentence, "I opened the window in front of you, haven't you seen?" - ...

There's some truth in that article. My parents, for instance, used to speak in Sardinian (not a dialect, but recognised as an endangered language by the UNESCO) when talking to each other or to their relatives, but they would only speak Italian with my brother and me. I grew up monolingual,...

1. to steal the showa) Jack Nicholson stole the show in Batman. (question: is it possible to use this idiom as far as idioms are concerned? question2: would it be better to use here the pres. perfect?) I think this is fine, though when talking about movies (especially describing action), we...

Hi my englishforums friends, I just finished translation of one episode of my favourite TV Show to cut my teeth in english and I came across there to very cool idiom "let the chips fall where they may."... I heard that in this sentense: I'm gonna tell it to the private...

Hello I am Scottish and a TEFL teacher. The two sentences mean the same, there is no difference whether you use to inf or not. It is past tense. No ref. to future or coincidence. Mary made her husband clean the bathroom make means forced (he did not want to do it) Neve heard of that...

Hi,in that example there's "just now" and that idiom means "a short time ago", so it's ok to use the past tense. I saw your sister just now.That's how I use it, at least. PS: I'm not saying (b) is ok. I think it's odd.