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Guest Posted 22 years ago
Grammar

Conditionals

My friend was studying conditionals and was asked to fill in the blank
the exits at heathrow aren't easily accessible, so if there was a fire we ......flee.
she answered 'couldn't 'but her teacher said the right answer was 'wouldn't be able to'
also she said 'If i were chinese I could use chopsticks well' Her teacher again said 'would be able to was the right answer.
could anyone try to explain this?
  

Top answer

These sentences are "if-clauses" (type 2) and the usual structure is Simple Past tense in the if-part of the sentence and would+infinitive in the other part of the senntence, the infinitive of can is "to be able to". This so far is the rule, I do think though, that in spoken language, a lot of people also replace "would be able to" by "could" (which can be either the past tense form or the conjunctive form of "can"), just because of the fact that it is simpler...

— Pemmican

  • These sentences are "if-clauses" (type 2) and the usual structure is Simple Past tense in the if-part of the sentence and would+infinitive in the other part of the senntence, the infinitive of can is "to be able to".
  • This so far is the rule, I do think though, that in spoken language, a lot of people also replace "would be able to" by "could" (which can be either the past tense form or the conjunctive form of "can"), just because of the fact that it is simpler...
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1 Answers
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These sentences are "if-clauses" (type 2) and the usual structure is Simple Past tense in the if-part of the sentence and would+infinitive in the other part of the senntence, the infinitive of can is "to be able to".

This so far is the rule, I do think though, that in spoken language, a lot of people also replace "would be able to" by "could" (which can be either the past tense form or
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