Jul 12th, 2012, 09:33 pm
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| eslHQ Enthusiast | | Join Date: Apr 28th, 2012
Posts: 36
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 is/was? why?
there is a sentence about tenses which I know how to use but do not know why.
A teenager studying in a non-English department asked me a question: in 1921 is/ was the year he was born in, which word verb inflection should be used?
I told him that WAS should be used because the time is past.
here comes a problem which I cannot solve:
when we say we did sth, it is because the action is past; but when we say the year 1921 is/was... , we are stating a fact, which is no action, and this fact is still true, because that guy is still a person born in 1921!!
could anyone solve the problem? |
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