Ask Lemmy

26734 readers

1480 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

what is the actual meaning of "would" and "could"? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

hii,

I am learning English for around 5 years and I still can't comprehend the meaning of "would" and "count" in some context. are they just past form of "will" and "can"?

"would you like coffee" means a person is asking if you liked coffee in past? "I would do it" means I did it in past?

I really don't understand since my language doesn't have anything like those words.

Edit: Thank you for answering my naive question :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I didn't really see people mentioning that "would" can still be used past-tense outside of "would have," though it's not in the same way - you use it when talking about something that happened multiple times in the past. For example, "When I was a kid my friends and I would go to the pool every Saturday," which means that, as children, my friends and I did visit the pool every Saturday.