Question
Updated on
18 Sep 2019
- Korean
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English (US)
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Question about English (US)
I learn that if "otherwise" is used for conjunction, the sentence before "otherwise" has to be used for the future tense.
Like this 'You'd better hurry, otherwise you'll miss the train.'
There is 'will' which is the future tense.
But I saw the example on the camblidge dictionary.
Ex)They had to leave early, otherwise the children would have been up too late.
Why did they use "would have been"?
I learn that if "otherwise" is used for conjunction, the sentence before "otherwise" has to be used for the future tense.
Like this 'You'd better hurry, otherwise you'll miss the train.'
There is 'will' which is the future tense.
But I saw the example on the camblidge dictionary.
Ex)They had to leave early, otherwise the children would have been up too late.
Why did they use "would have been"?
Like this 'You'd better hurry, otherwise you'll miss the train.'
There is 'will' which is the future tense.
But I saw the example on the camblidge dictionary.
Ex)They had to leave early, otherwise the children would have been up too late.
Why did they use "would have been"?
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18 Sep 2019
Featured answer
- English (US)
- Vietnamese
Would have been is the past perfect subjunctive form. If the clause before otherwise is in past tense, then you should use past perfect subjunctive.
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- English (US)
- Vietnamese
Would have been is the past perfect subjunctive form. If the clause before otherwise is in past tense, then you should use past perfect subjunctive.
Highly-rated answerer
- English (US) Near fluent
- Spanish (Mexico)
@Heeppiness
In those examples, "otherwise" is being used as synonym of "if not".
It's not exclusively used for future tenses.
- Korean
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