We talk about the past more often than it seems

We talk about the past more often than it seems. Tell a friend a cool story, retell someone's words, refer to another author in the report, talk about last weekend, vacation, or any memories — for all this, we need to know a few simple rules for matching times.

In Russian, everything is easy, but in English, if we are talking about the past, you can no longer use the past tense in conjunction with the present or future. Time matching is used in complex sentences that consist of two parts. The main part is independent (for example: he said). Subordinate-the part that depends on the main one, to which we can ask a question (for example: he said (what exactly?) that he would call).

If the main part uses one of the past tenses, we need to learn how to change the time in the subordinate part (regardless of how it sounds in Russian). There are several ways it can change. Simultaneous action If the actions in the main and subordinate parts occurred at the same time, then both parts will be Past Simple. But sometimes, the action in the subordinate part can be long. In this case, we use the Past Continuous (was/were + verb -ing). Previous action If the action in the main sentence happened later than the action in the subordinate clause, then the last one will be Past Perfect (had + verb in the 3rd form). The previous action may be prolonged. In this case, you should use Past Perfect Continuous (had + been + verb with the ending-ing). Don't forget that some verbs can't be used in continuous tenses. We will use Past Perfect with them. The most common ones are: be, belong, believe, feel, love, know, want. Subsequent action If the action in the subordinate part happens after the action in the main part, then we will use one of the times of the Future in the Past group (the same as Future Simple, but instead of "will" we use "would"). That is, focusing on a simultaneous, previous or sequential action, we can understand what time will be most appropriate to apply. In subordinate clauses of time with Past Perfect, a number of connecting adverbs and phrases are used that allow you to most accurately Express the temporal relationship between actions in the main and subordinate clauses: when, as soon as, till/until, before, after. When is used when we want to emphasize that the first action was completed before the second, and that they are closely related through the result. Till/until and before are traditionally used in the times of the Perfect group. In Past Perfect, the use of these adverbs emphasizes the completion or expected completion of one action before another. After is also often used with Past Perfect.

In conclusion, I want to note this is a new language for me, I still don't understand the concept of time matching, it doesn't look like either Russian or Ukrainian, you can face different problems when studying, at the moment all I can know is how to change the word, but when to use it, it is difficult for me. This the topic seems very complex until you start to understand it, in order not to make mistakes with the past tense, you need to study the agreement of tenses in English in more detail, because they are specifically different and not similar to the Russian language.

Dbl-302, Elizabeth Ndongo