The sentence asks how one would translate: "If she could fly, she would go to the moon." ?
My sense is that this is misleading because "if she could fly" is conditional not past continuous. Shouldn't it read "If she flew, she would go to the moon" to avoid confusion?
Thanks, Kalpana
“If she could…, she would…” - standard English expression.
‘If she could (was/were able to) fly …’ is not in the “conditional”, it is setting a condition/prerequisite state. (The confusion arises because ‘could’ and ‘would’ are used in multiple contexts in English).
In both English and French the “conditional” is in the ‘then’ clause - what the speaker asserts as true, if the prerequisite condition exists/arises. The ‘if/si’ clause describes the condition, but is not conditional.
The sentence asks how one would translate: "If she could fly, she would go to the moon." ?
My sense is that this is misleading because "if she could fly" is conditional not past continuous. Shouldn't it read "If she flew, she would go to the moon" to avoid confusion?
Thanks, Kalpana
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