Native sentence question
The second sentence is a little awkward to read, but when I read it out loud it sounded fine.
I read the second sentence out loud and it still didn't sound quite right. I might add a "where" to make the sentence read,
"We are going into areas where we didn't have the troops to go in before."
Had the brigadier asked me to edit his statement, I would have restated it as follows
1 The search is going to get harder before it gets easier.
2 We are going into areas we have not entered before.
I meant to write, "I would have restated it as follows:"
< We are going into areas we have not entered before. >
But that doesn't express the inability to go there previously.
<But that doesn't express the inability to go there previously.>
Okay, how about this:
"We are now going into areas we previously had not been able to go into due to lack of troops."
<<"We are now going into areas we previously had not been able to go into due to lack of troops." >>
Why not "were not able to" instead of "had not been able to"?
<Why not "were not able to" instead of "had not been able to"?>
Yeah, that works, too. It can be either. But by using the "had not been able to" phrase, it conveys a sense of description. By using that, you are saying that all the way up until now, you weren't able to go into those areas.
But really, both are correct as far as I'm concerned.
The sentence is a wee bit clumsy.
**"It's going to get harder before it gets easier during the search," said Brigadier General Mick Bednarek, US commander of the operation. "We are going into areas we didn't have the troops to go in before."**
What about this suggestion:
"During the search it's going to get harder before it gets easier," said Brigadier General Mick Bednarek, US commander of the operation. "We are entering areas for which we previously did not have sufficient troops".
The implication being that in the past they didn't have enough troops to go into the areas concerned which is why they hadn't done so previously.
Whichever, the Brigadier's reported quote was a bit of a dog's breakfast.
<<"We are now going into areas we previously had not been able to go into due to lack of troops." >>
CAN I USE "HAVE" IN THIS SENTENCE? WOULD IT MAKE SENSE?
"We are now going into areas we previously HAVE not been able to go into due to lack of troops."
sonjay -- hmm, I'd say that sounds OK, although "had" might be better, since "previously" suggests the past tense and therefore the pluperfect. But it still makes perfect sense with "have".
- Kef
<"We are now going into areas we previously HAVE not been able to go into due to lack of troops." >
Isn't "previously" (or "have") redundant there?
"Previously" is indeed redundant, but it's typical of spontaneous speech. It isn't a serious problem.
I don't see how "have" could be the problem. Replacing "have not been able to" with "weren't able to" or "couldn't" and leaving in "previously" would still be redundant.
- Kef
Why would "previously" in "previously couldn't go into" be redundant?