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How to talk about ability in the past? Before learning about past ability, let us look at how to talk about ability in present and future.

In our previous blog, we have learnt that we use ‘can’ and ‘will be able to’ to talk about ability in present and future tenses respectively.

Learning about Past Ability

Here, to talk about ability in the past, we use ‘could’ or ‘was able to/were able to’. The point to remember here is, there is a difference in underlying meaning depending on what we use to talk about ability in the past.

When we use ‘could’ to talk about ability in the past, it just lets you know that somebody had the capability to do certain action.

On the other hand, the use of ‘was able to/were able to’ gives us the clarity that somebody had the capability of doing certain action and he/she actually had done that action.

How to use ‘could’ | Learning about past ability

As we discussed earlier, ‘could ‘ talks about only past ability. When we are not sure of somebody had done some action with his/her past ability, we then use ‘could’.

Let us look at some examples to get the clarity of using ‘could’.

Examples | How to talk about ability in the past

1. He was strong so he could lift a 100 kilo weight.

Here, in this example, could relates to the past ability of a person but no action.

2. I could run a 20K Marathon as a young man.

(Somebody had the capacity of running 20 KM, but didn’t run the distance actually)

3. She could climb the trees as a child.

(As a young girl, she had the capability of climbing the trees, in fact she hadn’t climbed.)

How to use ‘was able to/were able to’ | How to talk about ability in the past

The expressions ‘was able to and were able to’ are used to talk about past ability when some action had been taken place with the existing ability in the past.

‘Was able to‘ and ‘were able to‘ are subject sensitive. If we have ‘he, she, ut and I’ as subjects, we use ‘was able to’ and for subjects ‘you, we and they’, we use ‘were able to’.

Let us now look at some examples for clarity.

Examples:

1. He was strong so he was able to lift a 100 kg weight.

Here, that person had the capacity to lift that weight and in fact he lifted it as well.(Ability +Action)

2. I was able to run a 20K Marathon as a young man.

(Somebody had the capability to run 20 KM and he/she had run the distance too.)

3. She was able to climb trees as a child.

(She had the capacity and she did climb trees as a child.)

4. They were able to win the World Cup.

(They had the ability to win and utilising that ability, they had won the World Cup. Notice that, here, we have used ‘were able to’ to talk about ability in the past because the subject un the sentense is ‘they’.)

With that note I would like to conclude this topic here. Hope you have got a certain idea as how to talk about ability in the past.

In our next blog, let us look at how to talk about ability in a negative sense. Ability in negative sense in the present, future and past tenses.

Thank you for being here with us till the end. Let us catch up in our next blog. Bye!

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