Reduced adverb clause

Question

How can I rewrite the sentence below to reduce its adverb clause ?"Since my mother couldn't speak French, she couldn't communicate with the local people."Thanks

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

Welcome to EF! If this is part of your homework, I hope you'll give the other sentences a go before asking us for the right answer.

Since clause equivalents - as I call them - can be tricky, I'll do this one for you:

Not being able to speak French, my mother couldn't communicate with the local people.

CB

Anonymous · Answer

Not being able to speak French, my mother couldn't communicate with local people.
or Not being able to speak French, she couldn't communicate with local people. (the meaning is a bit vague)
Read more here: http://grammarkit.blogspot.com/2012/11/reduced-adverb-clause.html

Grammarfreak · Answer

AnonymousNot being able to speak French, my mother couldn't communicate with local people.
or Not being able to speak French, she couldn't communicate with local people. (the meaning is a bit vague)

Here is my take:
The two sentences are essentially identical other than the subject nouns. The meaning seems quite clear to me. My doubt is whether "being" is appropriately used with " couldn't" in the context. I would remove "being" from this sentence. Consider: Being unable to swim, she drown. Personally, I think it is grammatically correct and the meaning came across. However, semantically, "being" and "drown" cause paradoxical, if not senamtic issue because "being" itself suggests presence but "drown " suggests "deceased". Therefore, your sentence will work better (to me anyway) without "being".
Unable to speak French, my mother couldn't communicate with [the] local people. This is the reduced version of :
She is unable to speak French. My mother couldn't communicate with [the] local people.

Reduced adverb clause

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