{"id":73270,"date":"2020-03-23T06:20:13","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T06:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=73270"},"modified":"2020-03-23T06:20:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T06:20:13","slug":"talking-about-ability-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/talking-about-ability-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking About Ability In English"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Present ability<\/h3>\n<p>We use\u00a0<b>can<\/b>\u00a0to talk about present or general ability.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u00a0<b>can\u00a0<\/b>swim.<\/li>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>can\u00a0<\/b>read Italian, but she\u00a0<b>can\u2019t\u00a0<\/b>speak it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Past ability<\/h3>\n<p>We use\u00a0<b>could<\/b>\u00a0to talk about general ability in the past.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>could\u00a0<\/b>read when she was four.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note that\u00a0<b>was\/were able<\/b>\u00a0is also possible with this meaning.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>was able to<\/b>\u00a0read when she was four.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Future ability<\/h3>\n<p>We normally use\u00a0<b>will be able\u00a0<\/b>to talk about future ability.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u00a0<b>will be able\u00a0<\/b>to speak good French in a few months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Unrealized past ability<\/h3>\n<p>We use\u00a0<b>could have + past participle<\/b>\u00a0to talk about unrealized past ability \u2013 to say that somebody was able to do something, but did not try to do it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was so angry I\u00a0<b>could have killed\u00a0<\/b>her.<\/li>\n<li>I\u00a0<b>could have married\u00a0<\/b>anybody I wanted to.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Couldn\u2019t have + past participle\u00a0<\/b>means that somebody would not have been able to do something even if they had wanted or tried to.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u00a0<b>couldn\u2019t have won<\/b>, so I didn\u2019t go in for the race.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Present ability We use\u00a0can\u00a0to talk about present or general ability. I\u00a0can\u00a0swim. She\u00a0can\u00a0read Italian, but she\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0speak it. Past ability We use\u00a0could\u00a0to talk about general ability in the past. She\u00a0could\u00a0read when she was four. Note that\u00a0was\/were&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2122,1378,2123],"class_list":["post-73270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","tag-ability","tag-can","tag-will-be-able-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73271,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73270\/revisions\/73271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}