Can I say? 1 A bat flew into my house and i broke my mirror yesterday, so can I say “Those things were bad omens.”? 2 When a dog strays into my house, and a butterfly flies into my house, so can I sa

Tâm

Can I say? 1 A bat flew into my house and i broke my mirror yesterday, so can I say “Those things were bad omens.”? 2 When a dog strays into my house, and a butterfly flies into my house, so can I say “These things are good omens.”? 3 Can I say “That thing was a mistake. / Those things were mistakes.”? 4 Can I say “This thing is a joke. / These things are jokes.”? 5 And what word I can use to replace the word "thing"? Thank you for your help!

Aug 19, 2018 4:13 PM

Answers · 5

Hi Tâm, Firstly I would say that you don’t need to use the word “thing”, for example you can say “this is a joke”, “that was a mistake” and “those were bad omens” etc. It is fine to use but also fine to leave out. All of your examples are correct grammatically. Instead of “thing” (in the place of ‘something happening’ as per your examples) you could say “time” or “event”. I hope it helps :) Take care, Triss

August 19, 2018

All of the sentences are fine. Remember subject verb agreement. You should say "When a dog strays" and "When a butterfly flies". You can omit things if you want, but using things is fine also. You can replace things with events, occurrences, incidents, occasions, or happenings.

August 20, 2018

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