Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[sabrinak]

Hello,

Would you tell me which sentence is the better or correct way of saying?
Why?



1. If you were Aprodite, would you have answered Pygmalion's prayer?

2. If you had been Aprodite, would you have answered Pygmalion's prayer?

Thank you dearly for your attention.

[CP]

The ever-popular sequence-of-tenses question.

When composing if-then statements, the sequence of tenses in English, Latin, French, and many languages is (for example):

If I am wrong, I will buy you a doughnut.
If I were in Paris, I would visit the Musee D'Orsay.
If I had known you were so sensitive, I would have been more careful with my words.

So:

1. If you were Aprodite, would you have answered Pygmalion's prayer? Wrong. Better: If you were Aphrodite [note spelling], would you answer Pygmalion's prayer?

2. If you had been Aprodite, would you have answered Pygmalion's prayer? Correct.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb