‎The following is a screenshot of the transcript of an audio clip. In the sentence:'his Dad was French, and his mum was Scottish', the word 'was' is used instead of 'is'. Is it because the nationalities of this person's parents have both changed or is there some other reason? I don't quite understand.（This short essay is very brief, so it doesn't mention whether his parents have changed their nationality or not.）[Image]

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It could be that they are no longer alive. If talking about someone else’s relatives it could be referred to in the past tense because that is when the speaker met them.

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Perhaps his parents are dead.

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I agree with the others - it has nothing to do with changing nationalities. People often use this sort of phrase. We don't know whether his parents are living or dead, but we do know that his birth was quite a bit in the past.   That's one possible reason for the past tense.

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It's very unlikely that they have changed their nationalities, and we don't know if they are no longer alive.  Because the act of choosing a name for her brother-in-law was quite a long time ago, and she may not know his parents well, she uses the past tense rather than the present.  It distances her from them without getting involved in further explanation.  This kind of drift to the past tense is not unusual.

Non perdere l'opportunità di imparare una lingua comodamente da casa tua. Esplora la nostra selezione di insegnanti di lingue esperti e iscriviti subito alla tua prima lezione!