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Anonymous Posted 17 years ago
Grammar
A little question related to expressing future
Hello:) I have a question related to the usage of the structures 'will' and 'going to' , namely, how do we tell which one is appropriate under the following circumstances:
example;
There are two friends chatting about something when, all of a sudden, one of them says: ' I'm going to go and ask Michael' and he leaves. Why didn't he express himself by saying 'I' will go and ask Michael'? I find it confusing because, even though, as far as I can tell, the structure 'going to'
is frequently used in SPEECH and it also presents the speaker's intentions, then, again, the decision has been made at the moment of speaking, implying the usage of 'will'.
Thank you.
Best Regards
Maciek
example;
There are two friends chatting about something when, all of a sudden, one of them says: ' I'm going to go and ask Michael' and he leaves. Why didn't he express himself by saying 'I' will go and ask Michael'? I find it confusing because, even though, as far as I can tell, the structure 'going to'
is frequently used in SPEECH and it also presents the speaker's intentions, then, again, the decision has been made at the moment of speaking, implying the usage of 'will'.
Thank you.
Best Regards
Maciek
Top answer
Anonymous Why didn't he express himself by saying 'I' will go and ask Michael'? He didn't want to express that meaning. He could have said I'm going to go ...
- Anonymous Why didn't he express himself by saying 'I' will go and ask Michael'?
- He didn't want to express that meaning.
- He could have said I'm going to go ...
- or I'll go ...
- In this case, the speaker's sense of telling what he planned to do overrode his sense that the decision was spontaneous .
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4 Answers
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AnonymousWhy didn't he express himself by saying 'I' will go and ask Michael'?He didn't want to express that meaning.
He could have said I'm going to go ... or I'll go .... In this case, the speaker's sense of telling what he planned to do overrode his sense that the decision was spontaneous. It frequently happ
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Thank you. I have consulted a considerable number of grammar books about the 'problem' in question, yet there are moments when I get a bit lost in the maze of possible choices.
Maciek
Maciek
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AnonymousThank you. I have consulted a considerable number of grammar books about the 'problem' in question, yet there are moments when I get a bit lost in the maze of possible choices.Unfortunately for the learner, there is no fail-proof rule which gives the "right answer" simply by analyzing the situation and/or the surrounding words used to express it. It
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