Also, are the following sentences correct?

A. I wish I haven’t eaten so much.

B. I wish you will be a millionaire one day. (Assuming high possibility of becoming a millionaire)

2. Do we say “Dr. Mahathir is/was the fourth PM of Malaysia?

1. When you are using “wish” as a main verb with a “that-clause”, we use past tenses with a present or future meaning. “Past perfect tenses are used for wishes about the past.” (M. Swan, Practical English Usage, 2005)

That is why the OALD uses “I wish I hadn’t eaten so much.”, NOT “I wish I haven’t eaten so much.”

The clause following “wish” is said to be a “that-clause”, because “that” is used before it as a connector, but it may also be dropped. Thus the sentence may be written: “I wish (that) I hadn’t eaten so much.”

B. To wish, in sense 1. of the verb “wish” in OALD, means “to want something to happen or to be true even though it is unlikely or impossible.” That is why the past or past perfect tenses are used in the OALD examples, like “I wish I were/was taller” and “I only wish I knew”.

So instead of using the verb “wish” in a sentence that assumes a high possibility of what you say coming true, why not use another verb like “I know”, “I think” or “I hope”:

“I know/think/hope you will be a millionaire one day.” Then you can use “will” instead of “would”.

2. We say “Dr. Mahathir was the fourth PM of Malaysia.” Although Dr Mahathir is still alive, he is no longer the prime minister of Malaysia. We can see how Mrs Thatcher, for example is described on some reputable websites:

RECENTLY an acquaintance asked whether one should say “You are welcome at my school” or “you are welcomed at my school”. It was an interesting question – interesting enough for me to explore the different ways in which the “-ed” suffix is used. Basically, the said suffix is used in three ways: (1) as an inflectional suffix for verbs; (2) as a suffix to form adjectives from nouns; and (3) as a suffix to form adjectives from verbs, specifically the past participles of verbs. Let me explain.

‘-ed’ as inflectional suffix

There are many variations in the form of the past tense (preterite) of verbs. A large class of verbs, called weak verbs, form the past tense, as well as the past participle, by tagging on the “-ed” suffix, e.g. laugh/laughed, travel/travelled. Variants of the suffix are “-d” (as in love/loved, hear/heard) and “-t” (as in smell/smelt~smelled, spill/spilt~spilled, dream/dreamt, mean/meant, keep/kept).

Weak verbs, a term found in the older grammar books, arise from the way that such verbs are conjugated – by simply adding the suffix “-ed” or its variants to the base verb. One should note a few features associated with the term: (1) verbs ending in a vowel-consonant combination double the consonant-letter before adding the “-ed” suffix (ban/banned, control/controlled, cross/crossed – but not always (focus/focused, sever/severed, vomit/vomited); (2) verbs ending in “-y” change the “y” to “i” before adding the “-ed” suffix (carry/carried, deny/denied, vary/varied); (3) verbs may undergo an internal change before adding the “-d” or “-t” suffix (sell/sold, dream/dreamt, leave/left, sleep/slept, bring/brought); (4) certain verbs with a consonant-plus-d ending form the past tense by changing the “d” to “t” (build/built, spend/spent); and (5) certain verbs with a vowel-plus-d or vowel-plus-t termination retain their form for the past tense (hit/hit, read/read but pronounced /reed/red/, shut/shut). Even with the above features, there is one characteristic that distinguishes weak verbs from strong verbs: weak verbs have the same form for the past tense and the past participle (love/loved/loved, lose/lost/lost, buy/bought/bought, quit/quitted/quitted or quit/quit/quit) whereas strong verbs may have the past tense in the “-ed” or “-d” or “-t” form BUT the past participle has a different form (swell/swelled/swollen), show/showed/shown).

[Strong verbs form their past tense without the addition of an added syllable (the strong form of conjugation); they are nearly all words of one syllable and belong to the early English stock; and the strong form of conjugation may be said to be dead because no new verbs are conjugated in this way (L. Tipping, 1935. Matriculation English Grammar of Modern English Usage.London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. p.214.)]

‘-ed’ as suffix to form adjective from noun

The suffix “-ed” is also added to the base form of nouns to form adjectives denoting “with, possessing, wearing, affected by”, as in feathered, meaning “having feathers”; moneyed, meaning “having money, rich”; and talented, meaning “possessing talent”. Phrases made up of adjective and noun form the corresponding hyphenated adjectives, e.g. bad-tempered, meaning “having a bad temper”, and multi-talented, meaning “possessing many talents”.

The following are some examples of such “-ed” adjectives and their usage: (1) teenaged, said of a someone between 13 and 19 years old (1) a left-handed person, being a person who normally uses the left hand to write and do most things; (2) in stockinged feet, meaning “wearing socks or stockings but without shoes”; (3) a four-storeyed building (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2010, p.1,471), referring to a building with four storeys – but, incongruently, it is multi-storey car park (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2004, p.939; OALD, 2010, p.971); (4) uniformed staff, meaning “staff wearing a uniform”, not “staff with a uniform physique or disposition”; (5) a wasp-waisted figure, referring to a lady’s figure with a noticeably narrow waistline.

Here are a few more examples to reinforce the “rule”: low-ceilinged room, detailed report, polka-dotted swimsuit, double-edged sword, open-ended discussion, orange-flavoured drink, bare-footed man, big-hearted person, well-intentioned gesture, landed property, life-sized statues, skilled workers, the speckled band, stepped pyramid, untenanted building, four-wheeled carriage.

One may note that “-ed” nouns-becoming-adjectives are easily applied to plants (single-celled plants, red-coloured stem, broadleaved plants, scented flowers, umbrella-shaped fungus), and to animals (yellow-banded scad, red-bellied piranha, duck-billed platypus, yellow-crested cockatoo, white-handed gibbon, horned toad, four-legged animal, red-nosed reindeer, winged insect).

The above lists but a small proportion of the very large number of “-ed” nouns that function as adjectives. On the other hand, there are some nouns in their basic form that function as adjectives, specifically as modifiers. The following are examples of modifier nouns: blood relative (not blooded relative), high-calibre personnel (not high-calibred personnel), left-hand drive (not left-handed drive), love story (not loved story), mother tongue (not mothered tongue), murder victim (not murdered victim).

For curiosity’s sake, note that a hyphen may make a difference in meaning. For example, one-armed man means “a man with one arm”, whereas one armed man means “a man who is armed with a weapon or weapons”.

‘-ed’ as suffix to form past participial adjective

We now come to the word “welcome” as posed at the beginning of this article. Let me extend the use of this word in the following pairs of sentences: (1) “You are always welcomed in my house” vs “You are always welcome in my house”; and (2) “There is a welcomed mat at the front door of the house” vs “There is a welcome mat at the front door of the house”.

It is at once obvious that for Example (1), the first version of the sentence is not tenable – one cannot have been welcomed when one has not come to the house. Likewise, for Example (2), the first version is weird: it implies a mat that has been welcomed – and by whom? It is clear that there is a difference between “welcome” as a regular adjective and “welcomed” as a past participial adjective (a past participle functioning as an adjective). There are many situations where it is necessary to differentiate between regular adjectives and past participial adjectives of the “-ed” form. The following pairs of examples illustrate: (1) “advance copy of the forthcoming book” vs “advanced state of decay”; (2) “an articulate person” vs “an articulated bus” (3) “a complete package” vs “a completed project”; (4) “express wish” or “express bus” vs “expressed juice of oranges” (5) “a separate room” vs “the separated yolk of an egg”.

I often hear references to “matured adult”, which I shall use to elaborate on the above point. Why should it be “mature adult” and not “matured adult” as commonly encountered in conversation? “Mature” is a regular adjective, but “matured” is a past participial adjective. Thus it is all right to say mature adult, meaning “an adult who has reached a stage of mental or emotional development characteristic of an adult”. On the other hand, matured adult implies that he, like a wine or a cheese, has been kept under special storage conditions to age and attain a desired quality. I may labour the point by considering the opposite of the “mature/matured” pair. One can understand what an immature adult is, but one cannot make sense of an immatured adult!

The above outline accounts for pairs of adjectives and past participles which look almost alike and are used attributively (i.e. preceding the word that is thus modified). Uncertainty may also arise when such pairs are considered for use in the predicate. For example, when does one use subject to instead of subjected to, and vice versa? A felon may be subjected to (“caused or forced to undergo”) caning, and a cancer patient may be subjected to (“treated with”) chemotherapy. On the other hand, a person is subject to (“under the control or authority of”) the laws of his country, any decision by the committee is subject to (“dependent or conditional upon”) a society’s constitution, and flights into and out of the airport are subject to (“likely to be affected by”) delay because of a workers’ strike.

We may note that British English and American English differ slightly in the terminology of certain dairy products. For example, BrE recognises skimmed milk and processed cheese for the AmE skim milk and process cheese. How do we reconcile the difference? Apparently BrE uses skimmed and processed as participial adjectives, whereas AmE uses the verbs skim and process as adjectives, specifically as modifier verbs.

Incidentally, it is roast (not roasted) beef, roast pork, and roast meat in both BrE and AmE. In such usage, the word roast is the short form of the past participle of the verb roast (G.O. Curme, 1947. English Grammar. Barnes & Noble Books. pp.65, 69).

Article from Mind Our English
By DR LIM CHIN LAM

“… I woke up early this morning though I stayed up till 3am last night. Strange though it may sound, I’m not an early bird … It was now time to be off to Adam’s house … It is always cold on Christmas day …” (quoted from my diary)

1. I wish to say that I am still not an early bird at the time of writing this diary, but that event (me getting up in the morning) actually happened this morning, which is already in the past.

2. Do I write “was now” or “is now”?

3. Is it “It is always cold …” or “It was always cold …”?

I wish to say that at the time of writing this diary (which is the night of Christmas, i.e. Dec 25), it’s still cold. In fact, it’s been cold on Christmas every year. 4. Which sentence is correct?

“We chatted away while we were having dinner” or “We were chatting away while we were having dinner.” I think the first sentence is correct, but the word “while” is used there. And according to the dictionary “while” means at the same time as something else is happening. So, I think the present continuous English grammar tense should be used in both of the clauses.

Answers

1. Events that occurred in the past at the time you are writing the diary should be written about in the past English grammar tense. For example, you were right in writing “I woke up early this morning …”

And you were also right in using the simple present English grammar tense in writing about personal habits or conditions that occur regularly, as you did in “I’m not an early bird” and “It is always cold on Christmas day.”

2. You should write “is now” if at the time of writing, you were about to go to Adam’s house. If you wrote about it later, then you should write “was then”.

3. I have answered this question in 1. You should write “It is always cold…”

4. Both actions – “chatting away” and “having dinner” – continued over the same period of time, so they should both be in the past continuous English grammar tense. But the sentence would read better if you don’t repeat “we were”, and write: “We were chatting away while having dinner.”

If you work hard on these English tenses then surely you may gain success. When a person wants to learn a new language, the main part which comes in it is grammar. Grammar of each and every language is different. The grammar or tenses used in foreign English is far more different than Indian English. People created this language and brought it on the top. Grammar in this language came later.

English is an intermediate language used in every country. Everybody doesn’t know each and every language. People of Russiacannot speak Chinese language as they don’t know. But how can they communicate with Chinese people? There can be a mediator between them who may know Chinese as well as Russian language or the Russian can communicate in English language with the Chinese person. But while communicating orally, English grammar tenses are not given prior importance.

Knowing the meaning of a new word, function of tense or use of prepositions doesn’t make a good learning until it can form a proper sentence or a paragraph. The sentence should make people feel enjoyable while reading so we should put some funny things in the sentences. The learners should take interest in learning the language; then only they can master the language. Some learners do lot of English grammar exercises to learn perfectly while others may not.

Grammar is simply a rule which people need to follow while learning any new language. When we play a game, it has some rules and we can’t break them as we may break down. In the same way, English has some grammar rules which can’t be ignored. But yes, rules of English language are tougher than rules of a game. It is just the same way how you learned your mother tongue. So it may not be more difficult for any person.

Observe the aspects of English grammar that are same to any other language. The grammar and tenses of other languages can be different and English grammar tenses can be dissimilar. When you learn to know the differences and similarities, you will learn the rules quickly. It is necessary to learn more number of English books.

When you read English books all the time, the grammar of yours gets improved.  When you participate in any essay writing activity or when you tell a story to anybody, you tend to remember where to use English tenses properly. You should know the difference between past and present tense so that you can form sentences correctly.

Try out the grammar rules yourself to learn them if you don’t like to be taught by somebody or practice English grammar exercises. You can write a few sentences to improve your grammar. Grammar consists of adverbs, nouns, adjectives, tenses etc so he or she needs a lot of time to concentrate on these rules to form a new sentence.

The tense called as the present perfect is mostly used in British English. Apart from this tense, there are other tenses like the present continuous and the present perfect continuous tense. For example, you can check out this sentence:

I am working for the last two hours. This is an incorrect sentence.

The correct sentence can be: I have been working since the past two hours.

The common mistake here is with the tenses in English; the present continuous and present perfect continuous have different roles. So, you must know where to use the present continuous and when to use the present perfect continuous. Students normally get confused between these two tenses when it comes to where they should use the present perfect continuous tense.

The present continuous tense talks about an action going on at the time of speaking and the present perfect continuous tense talks about an action performed in the past, going on in present and is still going on. Adverbs like ‘since’ and ‘for’ are used more. Other tenses in English like ‘future simple’ and ‘future perfect’ have lot more dissimilarity. An example of the future simple tense is:

She will make more money.

An example of the future perfect tense is: At the end of the year, she will have made money.

So there is a lot of difference in this sentence.

Students get confused while using these tenses and some take English grammar lessons from teachers to learn perfect English. There is a lot of difference among the present perfect, simple past and the future tenses. The present perfect tells about the present, simple past about the past and future tense about the future. In the same way, be careful while using simple past and past perfect tenses. Students do change past with perfect tenses and the meaning of the sentence becomes different. The process of interchanging the tenses while writing about the same topic can be called as ‘tense shift’.  

These errors are quite common in schools and colleges. They can be corrected by reading loudly and polishing your grammar. Another problem in English language has articles. Articles are of two types: definite and indefinite. The main rule is that the noun should be a singular and not a plural. You should know where to use ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’. So when you form a sentence, you should use the perfect article along with using the right English grammar tenses to get the perfect sentence.

Practice your skills by writing and reading English books. In today’s world, English is used everywhere. The main language in schools, colleges and other educational institutes is English. English is mainly used for communicating with foreign people. So, the use of English grammar tenses in a proper way can make your English perfect. People speaking British or any other foreign language may not know how to speak proper American English as the tenses are a lot more different. Indian people prefer American English compared to British English language.

Situations where Future Perfect Continuous or Progressive Tense are used:-

1. Duration Before Something in the Future

Examples:

• They will have been talking for over an hour by the time Steve arrives..
• How long will you have been studying when you graduate?

• By the next year, John and his wife will have been living together for 30 years.

2. Cause of Something in the Future

Examples:

• Ali will be very tired when he gets home because he will have been jogging for over two hours.

• We will be making a rest stop in half an hour, because you will have been driving the car for 4 hours by then, and feeling very tired.

1)      Duration Before Something in the Past

Examples:

• He had been working at that company for three years when it went out of business.
• How long had you been waiting to get on the train?
• I wanted to sit down because I had been standing this whole morning.

2)      Using the Past Perfect Continuous before another action in the past is a good way to show cause and effect

Examples:

• Steve was tired because he had been jogging.
• Susan gained weight because she had been overeating.
• He failed the test because he had not been attending class.

3) Third Conditional

Remember that this tense is also used in third conditional sentences.

Examples:

• If it hadn’t been raining, we would have gone to the park.

4) Reported Speech

Examples:

• She said she knew Mike had been lying to her.
• Mary said she had never been swimming so much in one day.

To note

1) When the past perfect progressive answers a how-long question, it often uses the words for and since.

Examples:

a). The boys were very tired because they had been playing basketball since early this morning.

b). The boys were very tired because they had been playing basketball for 4 hours.

Notice that it is not necessary to use the words before and after when using the past perfect progressive.

2) It is important to remember that Non-Continuous Verbs cannot be used in any continuous tenses. Also, certain non-continuous meanings for Mixed Verbs cannot be used in continuous tenses. Instead of using Past Perfect Continuous with these verbs, you must use Past Perfect.

Examples:

• The motorcycle had been belonging to George for years before Tina bought it. Not Correct
• The motorcycle had belonged to George for years before Tina bought it. Correct

Situations where present perfect continuous tense are used:-

1.  Actions that started in the past and continue in the present

Examples:

• Ali has been painting the romm for 2 hours. He’s still painting it
• John have been working as a postman since 2000. He still work as a postman

1. 2.      Past actions recently stopped

Examples:

• I’m tired because I‘ve been running just now
• Look at her eyes! I’m sure she has been crying. She stopped crying when she saw her boyfriend

1. 3.      Temporary Actions and Situations

Examples:

• I have been living in Boston for two months.

• I have been working as a waitress for the past week

 To note :-

1) “Has been” is used with the subjects which are third person and singular. ” Have been” is used with all other subjects and plural

We use the future progressive tense for:

1)     Activity that will occur in the future and continue for a certain period of time. We can specify the time when the activity is going to take place:

Examples:

• I will be attending the conference next month.
• He’ll be working late at the office tonight.

2) Specific Time as an Interruption in the Future

   Examples:

• Tonight at 6 PM, I am going to be going to my friend house.
• At eight o’clocktonight, we will still be swimming in the club house.
   

3)     To make a guess about the present

Example:

• My father will be working now. (= I think he is working now, but I’m not completely certain)

To note

Like all future tenses, the Future Continuous cannot be used in clauses beginning with time expressions such as: when, while, before, after, by the time, as soon as, if, unless, etc. Instead of Future Continuous, Present Continuous is used.

Examples:

• While I am going to be finishing my homework, she is going to make dinner. Not Correct
• While I am finishing my homework, she is going to make dinner. Correct

Remember not to use the future continuous tense with non-action verbs like seem and know; include be in this list for future continuous tense. These verbs should use the simple future.

She will be being here at 3:00.

She will be here at 3:00.

 The followings situations used Past Continuous Tense

 1) Duration in the past

We use the Past Continuous to talk about actions or situations that lasted for some time in the past, and whose duration time is unknown or unimportant.

Examples:

• I was watching TV yesterday in the evening.
• She was sleeping on the couch.
• The dog was barking.
•  

2) Interrupted actions in progress

The Past Continuous is often used when one action in progress is interruped by another action in the past. We usually use when or while to link these two sentences.

Examples:

• I was talking with James when the telephone rang.
• While Angelica was playing tennis, the plane crashed .
• When Bob was painting windows, it started raining
• What were you doing while you were waiting?
• ‘I was washing the car while my wife was cleaning the ho

3) Two activities of similar duration that were going on in parallel.

We also use this tense to talk about two or more activities happening at the same. We usually use when or while to link the two sentences.

Examples:

• I was watching TV and Barbara was reading a book.
• The family was eating the dinner and talking.
• When Bob was painting windows, Mary was working in the kitchen.
•  

4) Timid / polite questions

If we want to ask a polite question, we can use the Past Continuous.

Examples:

• I was wondering if you could open the window.
• I was thinking you might help me with this problem.

Even though the sentences have a Past Continuous form, they refer to the present moment. Their meaning is similar to the “could you” sentences, but they are more polite.

5) Irritation

Remember that you can also express irritation over somebody or something in the past.

Examples:

• She was always coming late for dinner

 6) Narrative in past tense.

Examples:

• It was raining. The water was pouring down in sheets and the passersby were getting wetter with every step, despite their umbrellas.

To note

It is also used, in sentences with when or while, to refer to an action which was taking place
                                          when a shorter, brief action took place. 
   
                                          ● Yesterday evening, while I was watching television, the phone rang.
                                          ● When my husband arrived home yesterday evening, I was cooking dinner.

Remember not to use the past continuous tense with non-action verbs like seem and know. These verbs should use the simple past.

I was knowing my neighbour quite well. – wrong

I knew my neighbour quite well.

Remember that so called state verbs cannot be used in continuous tense forms. Example : ‘I was knowing knew Samantha very well’