Lol, for some reason this made me think of a scene from The Good Place:
Hey. You look happy. You get laid last night? I didn't. Tried. Hard. This chick that I met after I followed her into a yoga class, but she wasn't into it. Maced me. Right in the eyes. Stung like hell. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Hey.
It SAYS that, but regardless of the source, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Will and would are both modal auxiliary verbs, and as such, don't actually have a past tense in the sense other verbs do. They don't have participles either. You don't have "woulding" or "woulded", and neither has a present or past tense either. Even if you wanted to argue it, what's the past tense of other modal auxiliaries? What's the past tense of "may"? Or "should"? And before you say "May have" or "should have", then why isn't the past tense of "will" "will have?"
The same is true of "can" and "could". Could is NOT the past tense of "can" because a past tense for a modal auxiliary verb is nonsensical. What they MEAN when they write that is "could is a verb that can be used in place of can in some situations to refer to the ability to do something having taken place in the past", but they are different words that happen to share related usage.
In the case of "will"/"would", not even THIS makes sense. Will is used as an indicator to shift the following verb's action into the future. The past tense of shifting something into the future means... what? Making something hypothetical?
While calling these verbs "past tense" is a functional shorthand for explaining their function, the reality is modal auxiliaries do not have tenses or other forms, and it's disappointing to see the British council screw this up.
It’s weird even thinking of “will” as a verb. It involves no action, unlike every other verb.
“I will.” is like the sentence “You dolt.” Neither contains any action. I’m willing to accept linguists think of the word as a verb, but I’m also deeply confused why they would.
I wanna see moar! I might print one - keep in mind we have logos on the bottom part, one left, one right - I will have to check with communication before I can add that for completeness. Unless it’s art exhibit… I’ll show them to our art curator.
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