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I am still unsure about when to use 'would' and when 'will' while making conjectures about the events in the past. Is the difference merely in the degree of certainty?

Besides, I am not sure what difference is between:

  1. It won't have BEEN millions... (stressed main verb)
  2. It won't have been millions... (unstressed main verb)

Source: https://youtu.be/OunzCSCt43w?t=806 Would I Lie to You S17 E6. Non-UK viewers. 2 Feb 24

ColleenV
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sanya6
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    The questions are a little confusing, you might want to narrow it down -- break it into separate questions about conditional phrasing (would vs. will?) and the "have been" phrases you give as examples. – user8356 Feb 20 '24 at 14:52
  • Please explain the context in which you think it makes sense to put heavy stress on the word *been* here. Usually, if there was any stress at all, it would normally fall on *millions* (often, reflecting speaker emphasizing that someone else's reference explicitly or implicitly exaggerated the number). OR stress might be put on *won't* when speaker is baldly refuting someone elses claim that it *was* "millions". I don't say stress can't be put on *been*, but it's certainly unlikely for a native Anglophone. – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '24 at 16:07
  • (Your link to a source video doesn't work for me, based in the UK.) – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '24 at 16:09
  • The speaker is joking, he does not stress BEEN, and there's a clash between won't and been as future and past. Not recommended for learners, if that's the question. "It won't have been millions" says that in the future, we will not see that the numbers have been (were) that high. – Yosef Baskin Feb 20 '24 at 16:33
  • I just realised the link is for "non--UK viewers", so I switched to a US vpn to access it. I'd say David Mitchell does in fact place "secondary stress" on *been* there. It's not "primary stress", because he's not really disagreeing with what previous speaker said - he's asking for *clarification. Reason being she said it felt like millions, so he's simply pointing out that there's obviously a difference between what it felt like, and what it actually was. He might just as well have stressed It wasn't actually millions...* or even It wasn't* millions...* – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '24 at 18:57
  • ...because stressing any instance of the verb [TO (actually) BE] in that context simply contrasts "the reality" with what it felt like*. I didn't listen to the full context, but it's obviously not* a situation where whatever's being counted really could be in the millions (for all I know, it's "How many people came to your party last night?"). – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '24 at 18:59
  • @FumbleFingers Wow! Thanks a lot for the detailed and lucid explanation! This is something I was totally unaware of! – sanya6 Feb 20 '24 at 20:23
  • I don't understand why someone downvoted your question. Perhaps irritated that they couldn't access the link, same as me originally. The significance of emphatic (really) BE** X as opposed to *BE like* X (feel, seem* like)* just feels obvious and natural to me as a native Anglophones, but I suppose it's all very obscure for a learner. Not something you'd normally find explained in a textbook! If no-one else posts an answer I might copy these comments in later. – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '24 at 21:59
  • There are 2 separate questions here. This question already covers won't vs wouldn't. – Stuart F Feb 21 '24 at 12:51
  • https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/b1-b2-grammar/future-continuous-future-perfect All this is explained on that site. In English, you can stress anything in a sentence to change its meaning. The tense is future perfect. – Lambie Feb 21 '24 at 14:09

1 Answers1

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I don't understand "it won't have been millions" as a statement about the past but as a projection into the future concerning the as yet unknown facts of a recent event.

Man, on the TV it looked like the crowd at the capitol was in the millions!

-- That was just the camera angle. You'll see. It won't have been millions.

If we were speaking about the past, we'd use wouldn't:

Millions of Londoners died from the plague in the 14th century.

--No, it wouldn't have been millions. The population of London in the 14th century is thought to have been well under 100,000.

TimR
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  • You mean, 'It won't have been millions... ' = 'The evidence will (or may?) emerge in the future that this statement was inaccurate' ? – sanya6 Feb 21 '24 at 14:16
  • Close. The evidence will surely emerge that your sense of the number is greatly exaggerated. The speaker is confident that the other person's number is wrong. – TimR Feb 21 '24 at 14:41