italki - How to understand "to be" in the past? 1. When I point to something, I can say "What is this?

Tâm

How to understand "to be" in the past? 1. When I point to something, I can say "What is this? - What are these?", so when I can use "What was this? - What were these? " Ex: I saw a video on youtube, its name is "What was this?", why used "What was this?" not "What is this?"? Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q289WrcIA00 Thank you!

Sep 30, 2018 6:22 AM

Answers · 7

Yes, you can. You can do that whenever something has changed. In the video, they say something like 'you have destroyed something'. Therefore what they have now is not what it originally was. And that seemed to be the point (if it had one?) of the video - guessing what it was.

September 30, 2018

I suppose that these guys refer to the item on the plate before it was processed.

September 30, 2018

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