![]() And the grammar construct in question is “ couldn’t have been”.Īt first if you just look at “ couldn’t have been,” it might confuse you. Today I’m bringing you another English idiomatic expression video but unlike other English idiomatic expression videos where I’m focusing on typical English idioms and phrasal words and collocations today I’m bringing you what I like to call a grammar construct. Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s Robby here from and welcome back to my video blog. Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Imprints natural English speech patterns in your mind - revolutionary speech exercising technology!īuilds your English confidence - no more situations when you stop and hesitate when speaking English! English Harmony Systemįor those foreign English speakers whose English understanding, writing and grammar is already good but they're struggling with spoken English! If you’re interested in improving your English fluency too, please check out the English Harmony System which is a product I created to help all my fellow foreigners to better their spoken English and achieve so much more in professional, social and personal life. Then, one fine day, after years of constant pursuit of English fluency, I realized the key aspect of spoken English improvement – learning English phrases and word combinations instead of studying grammar rules and trying to construct sentences in your head from scratch! I couldn't learn to speak fluent English for 5 years - read about what I was doing to learn to speak fluently HERE - are YOU in the same situation? Throughout my entire life I’ve always wanted to speak in English fluently, but because of the way English is taught in schools, I always struggled with my spoken English. That is quite possibly a dialectal and culturally-dependent shade of meaning, however.I’m Robby, and I’m a non-native English speaker. However, I would say there is a shade of meaning distinction, that the basic future means that it might have been done very shortly before Tuesday, while the future perfect carries the implication that it will have been done in good time. Thus, while there is a grammatical distinction between your examples, one being in the future and the other future perfect, the fact that by is involved removes any essential semantic difference. I do not feel, however, that this changes the distinction (or lack thereof) between your examples - unless there's some local convention about that distinction as well. Without that clarification, there might be local or occupational conventions, but it is hard to be entirely sure what a person means by it. One set of rules I've worked with specifies that "by a specified day" means "by 5:00pm on that day". Legal documents or regulations often specify what it means. Now, doing something by a certain day is ambiguous. ![]() There is then no distinction between that and "it will have been done by 3:00pm on Friday", in terms of literal meaning. Thus, "it will be done by 3:00pm on Friday" means that it will be done, complete, nothing left to do as regards it, at or before 3:00pm on Friday. If you specify a single point in time, doing something by that point is clear - it will be completely done. ![]() The use of by, however, makes the distinction very murky. On is the future, and the other is past-in-future, future perfect (both are passive). The difference between "will be done" and "will have been done" is a relatively simple one.
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