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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007'however may be and tense lag in BrE
Hi. Recently,on this site,a couple of native speakers said that 'However old she was,she won the race' was all right.My notion is that when you use 'however' the verb part needs to contain 'may',i.e. you should say 'However it may be' and not 'However it is'.Also I think that there needs to be what -- for lack of a better expression -- might be called a 'tense lag' between the 'however clause' and the one succeeding it.That is:the tense of the clause beginning with 'however' needs to lag the tense of the succeeding clause -- well,not quite;but examples will show what I mean. Thus we should say: 1)However old she may be,she will win the race. 2)However old she might be,she wins the race. 3)However old she may have been,she won the race. 4)However old she might have been,she had won the race. I'd like to know what the BrE take on the subject is.I have already been told that neither rule is stressed in AmE.But perhaps there are other comments that speakers of AmE might wish to make.These are welcome of course. > Hi. Recently,on this site,a couple of native speakers said that > 'However old she was,she won the race' was all right.My notion is that [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > comments that speakers of AmE might wish to make.These are > welcome of course. In that context 'however' means 'no matter'. There ARE NO RULES in English! > Hi. Recently,on this site,a couple of native speakers said that > 'However old she was,she won the race' was all right.My notion is that [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > comments that speakers of AmE might wish to make.These are > welcome of course. I'm a BrE speaker, and I agree that the "may" should really be in there. But I think it depends on context, e.g. Tom: "She was pretty old, you know, probably at least thirty" Dick: "Well however old she may have been, she won the race" OR Tom: "She was thirty-five" Dick: "No way! She was no more than thirty" Harry: "Well however old she was, she won the race". In the first example, they are simply discussing the fact that she won the race despite her age - which is somewhat uncertain. In the second, two of them are arguing about her *actual* age (i.e. how old she *was*), and the third person is curtailing the argument and steering the conversation back to the fact that she won the race. It's quite a subtle distinction. The above is just my take on it, not to be taken as definitive! Mike M >Hi. Recently,on this site,a couple of native speakers said that >'However old she was,she won the race' was all right.My notion is that > when you use 'however' the verb part needs to contain 'may' *Needs* to contain "may", no. *May* contain "may", yes. "However old she was" is perfectly good spoken or coloquial BrE. "However old she may have been" is rather more literary or grammatical, but in spoken BrE sounds rather pompous, laboured, pedantic or over-stressed to me. In practice, as most schools here haven't taught grammar in any meaningful sense for decades, and the language is (as languages always will) noticably changing over time, it's pretty meaningless to ask what's "right". Cheers - Ian (BrE: Yorks., Notts., Hants.) |
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