Tatiana
Professional Teacher
My grammar confusion Hi native English speakers! I know quite a lot of classical grammar rules. But real-life language sometimes seems to be against the rules and I get confused. So here is my first portion of “Why is that?!” questions on English grammar. 1. Why do you ask vs why are you asking? Which one is correct? 2. Dad said that he will put up the new shelves in the kitchen tomorrow. (from English textbook) Why not “Dad said that he would put up the new shelves in the kitchen the next day”? 3. Keith said that he can't put up with his boring job any longer. (from English textbook) Why not “Keith said that he couldn’t put up with his boring job any longer.” 4. We put up our tent before it got too dark to see what we were doing. Why not “We had put up …” because this action was before other actions and there must be Past Perfect?
Jan 28, 2015 10:19 AM
Corrections · 8
1

My grammar confusion

Hi native English speakers! I know quite a lot of classical grammar rules. But real-life language sometimes seems to be against the rules and I get confused. So here is my first portion of “Why is that?!” questions on English grammar.

1. Why do you ask vs why are you asking? Which one is correct?  <em>neither is incorrect - and I wouldn't make a big distinction</em>

2. Dad said that he will put up the new shelves in the kitchen tomorrow. (from English textbook)
Why not “Dad said that he would put up the new shelves in the kitchen the very next day”?  <em>Why would you want to use three words when one is quite precise? Next day to what?</em>

3. Keith said that he can't put up with his boring job any longer. (from English textbook)
Why not “Keith said that he couldn’t put up with his boring job any longer.”  '<em>Can't' is more or less quoting verbatim what he said; 'couldn't' is conveying the meaning of his words - he would say: 'I can't' but you may report 'couldn't'</em>

4. We put up our tent before it got too dark to see what we were doing.
Why not “We had put up …” because this action was before other actions and therefore must be Past Perfect?  <em>Well you haven't shown any other actions - but if there are consequences 'had put' is correct.  'We had put up ... so we could sleep early' but 'We put up ... and then we slept early'</em>

January 28, 2015
Both are correct. 2. Using ‘tomorrow’ sounds natural to me. ‘The next day’ sounds as if something is missing. For example, ‘he will put up the shelves the next day that he has time’. 3. ‘Can’t put up with’, what he feels now. ‘Couldn’t put up with’, what he felt previously. 4. The example using ‘put’ sounds more natural for a simple description of events. I would use the past perfect to stress the order of events, especially if something happened to make me question the order of events.
January 28, 2015
Question 4 The example sentence sounds more natural. If you used 'because' instead of 'before' to connect the clauses I think 'We had put up' is more appropriate, 'We had put up our tent because it had gotten too dark to see what we were doing.' Like I said at the start these answers are just my opinion, when I speak English I don't think of grammar so if you want specific grammatical answers teachers might be a better bet especially as some of the differences here are quite subtle. Anyway hope I helped
January 28, 2015
For number 3 For me this is to do with the tense Keith said that he can't put up with his boring job any longer. Indicates that Kieth is still in the job and I assume wants to leave that job where Keith said that he couldn’t put up with his boring job any longer. is referring more to a past event and has probably left. For me if you can give a bit more text I can get a better idea of the context and give a better answer
January 28, 2015
Question 3 - 'Can't ' here shows the man still has the job and is going to quit in the future. 'Couldn't' suggests he has already quit.
January 28, 2015
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