Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
toweter wrote:
here's another grammatical question (my last one was lost because of the exchange of the php dn-server a few months ago..). i hope i don't annoy you with my questions about english grammar, but i don't know a board about english grammar and asking here is the fastest way
bbc.co.uk has excellent site about english grammar and learning english in general.
toweter wrote:
The exercise I had to solve: Put the following statements and questions into reported speech with the introductory verbs in the simple past.
Given statement: A girl: "I am interested in politics." (TO SAY)
My sentence: "A girl said she is interested in politics."
Expected sentence: "A girl said she was interested in politics."
I thought if the girl said "I am interested..." she is now still interested in politics and the expected sentence says she was interested in politics, but she isn't any more!?
Is the sentence with "is" wrong or is it right, too?
was is basically saying that she used to be, which may or may not mean she still is.
is, directly says that at the current moment, she happens to be interested in politics.
If you were talking to someone on the street about what she said, your sentance would be perfect, but they asked for the past tense version.