I need somebody, who speak well English. Can you help me?
I'm reading a book in English and I found this sentence in this book: 'We have seen that our civilization rests upon that of Greece and Rome, and that we must look to the past if we would understand the present.'.
I would like to ask you why the author uses 'would' after 'if'. We can't use would after 'if', can we?
Thank you very much for the help!
válasza:Normally, I'd say in the above sentence 'would' refers to the intention of understending the present and has nothing to do with either future tenses or reported speech.
Since it's a confusing one i asked one of my friends in England and she said it just sounded weird. She also said the correct way to say that would be "if we would like to understand" or "if we want to understand".
Köszönöm minden hozzáértőnek az alapos magyarázatát!
Ich habe diese Frage auf einer deutscher Webseite auch gestellt, und dort hat Jemand das geschrieben:
Sounds like a rather old text - today you would also use "is based upon" instead of "rests upon". Back when the text was written "if we would understand" meant something like "if we really want/ try to understand"
Vielleicht hat er/sie recht.
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