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Lev Landau Posted 13 years ago
Grammar
Were vs Are vs Have been in this sentence
I'm confused as to which tense I should use in the following sentence:
--- The people who have been able to solve this problem [were / are / have been] very talented. ---
Were: I don't think it's correct to use were since many of those people may still be alive. But then, I'm not sure.
Are: In my opinion, this has the biggest chance to be the right choice. But then, what if some of those people died, which would make the subject a mixture of the past and the present?
Have been: Grammatically, I personally can't see anything wrong if 'have been' is used. But the sentence will be rather long with it. And I don't like the repeated uses of it.
Can someone shed some light on this matter please?
Thank you very much.
--- The people who have been able to solve this problem [were / are / have been] very talented. ---
Were: I don't think it's correct to use were since many of those people may still be alive. But then, I'm not sure.
Are: In my opinion, this has the biggest chance to be the right choice. But then, what if some of those people died, which would make the subject a mixture of the past and the present?
Have been: Grammatically, I personally can't see anything wrong if 'have been' is used. But the sentence will be rather long with it. And I don't like the repeated uses of it.
Can someone shed some light on this matter please?
Thank you very much.
Top answer
There are two possibilities: 1- The people who have been able to solve this problem are very talented. This is what we say when the solutions are recent, and the people (or some of them) are still living. 2- The people who were able to solve this problem were very talented.
- There are two possibilities: 1- The people who have been able to solve this problem are very talented.
- This is what we say when the solutions are recent, and the people (or some of them) are still living.
- 2- The people who were able to solve this problem were very talented.
- This is what we say when the solution is in the past, well known today, and the people are no longer alive.
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1 Answers
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There are two possibilities:
1- The people who have been able to solve this problem are very talented.
This is what we say when the solutions are recent, and the people (or some of them) are still living.
2- The people who were able to solve this problem were very talented.
This is what we say when the solution is in the past, well known today, and
1- The people who have been able to solve this problem are very talented.
This is what we say when the solutions are recent, and the people (or some of them) are still living.
2- The people who were able to solve this problem were very talented.
This is what we say when the solution is in the past, well known today, and
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