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>Sender:       Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       Alan Hynds <[log in to unmask]>
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>
>>Marc
> Departement d'Etudes Anglophones (FORELL-AIT),
>
>Your comment and those of the others who have responded have convinced not
>to use "must" in the past. Maybe I got the impression that thisis was
>acceptable from reading older texts, or British English--I don't know.
>
>Anyway, Wendell suggested that "deb=EDa" might be the subjunctive. Actually,
>it's the imperfect. I see that you work with French, which has the same
>tense and, like Spanish, has basically two past tenses that roughly
>correspond the one tense in English. Also, there is a nearly exact
>correspondence in meaning and use between "devoir" and "deber."
>
>Just for fun, could you tell me how, in a literary/academic text, you would
>translate "devait"?
 
"Les femmes azteques devaient respecter les traditions"
>
>You're going to say "had to," right?
>
>Alan
 
Right, Alan.
Best,
Marc
 
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Marc Fryd       Departement d'Etudes Anglophones (FORELL-AIT),
                Faculte des Lettres et des Langues, Universite de Poitiers,
                95 avenue du Recteur Pineau,86022 Poitiers, France
Personal phone: (33) (0)5 49 43 79 66
Personal Fax:   (33) (0)5 49 43 59 79
E-mail:         [log in to unmask]
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