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What tense do they use in news or something you're fairly certain is fact but you didn't witness it yourself?
This is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while oth…
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"This is in terrible contrast to french " I guess I got lucky in France then because they felt so sorry for me after my attempts at french they would reply in english
That's kind of the problem though, if you are trying to learn and people just switch to English it's difficult to make progress. I've had situations in France where I ended up having one side of the conversation in French and one in English!
It is called evidentiality. It doesn't have any direct relationship to time, as one would expect with a tense. Southern Quechua has a reported event evidential affix as well. A friend who is a speaker of Quechua was once horrified, hearing that a man was going to be given a life sentence for murder in Bolivia. They played a portion of his confession over the radio, and the accused man used the reported event evidenti…
You can use quotes neutrally: John says "the nuclear waste is totally safe".
Or you can use them to cast subtle shade: John says the nuclear waste is "totally safe".
This is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while oth…
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To add, knowledge of Turkish will also make it easier to converse in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and a bunch of other countries in the region.
Also many Iranians speak 'Turk' and understand Turkish from watching Turkish telenovelas on satellite TV.
So thats where Trump gets his "like a dog" comparison he loves to whip out
Turkish is one of my favorite languages I've learned, and one of the best languages for a language learner. I think it's great for learners for two reasons: first of all, the grammar and orthography is extremely regular, and probably more importantly is that in my experience turkish speaking people are more than happy to engage is extended small talk about anything, are extremely eager to understand you despite your…
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As someone that has lived in French and German speaking countries and nowadays speaks both fluently, I would assert usually in French speaking countries there is the cultural issue of speaking directly in English versus trying a very basic "Parlez vous Anglais?" as initial question. Whereas in German speaking countries I only had any issues in reaching out to technicians for house repairs. However if we insist learni…
> there is the cultural issue of speaking directly in English versus trying a very basic "Parlez vous Anglais?" as initial question In my experience in the Netherlands you should definitely just start speaking English to people, as asking someone if they speak English is a bit like asking if they can read