Not exactly tricky words this week, but what could be a tricky tense (slovesný čas), the past perfect (predminulý) tense. The Talent Night piece includes some good
examples of this - no past conditional forms unfortunately, but some typical narrative and some reported speech examples. They all comply with the three preconditions (predpoklady) for using the
past perfect: talking about a sequence of events in the past, when it is important that one event happened before another (e.g. when the first is the reason for the second), and in the text the
order of the events is reversed, because the second one is mentioned before the first.
Examples: "The President said he had already heard a great deal about the competition"; "He pointed out that the contest had attracted more than 1500 people"; "He
appreciated the fact that they had composed their own songs"; "The draw was awaited by all those who had filled in coupons". Every time the second-mentioned action happened in reality BEFORE the
first one - you can understand "had" in English like "ešte predtým" in Slovak.
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