Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Modals Can, Could, Verb Idiom "Be Able To" and Managed To
Modals Can, Could, Verb Idiom "Be Able To" and Managed To
-1-Can
The main verb is always the bare infinitive (infinitive without "to").
Use of Can:
We use can to talk about what is possible, what we are able or free to do:
We often use can in a question to ask somebody to do something. This is not a real question - we do not really want to
know if the person is able to do something, we want them to do it! The use of can in this way is informal (mainly
between friends and family):
-2- Be able to: “Be able to” is a verb idiom. It replaces can in tenses of the future, the past and the present perfect.
1
Use of be able to talk about:
Ability
We use “be able to” to express ability. We sometimes use "be able to" instead of "can" or "could" for ability. "Be able
to" is possible in all tenses - but "can" is possible only in the present and "could" is possible only in the past for ability.
In addition, "can" and "could" have no infinitive form. So we use "be able to" when we want to use other tenses or the
infinitive. Look at these examples:
We tend to use was able to or managed to if we are talking about what happened in a particular situation or are
referring to a specific achievement:
Were you able to / did you manage to find a solution to him before he left home?
No, I'm sorry, I wasn't able to / didn't manage to convince him.
However, with verbs that refer to the five senses, see, hear, smell, feel, taste, and with verbs that refer to thought
processes, understand, believe, remember, decide, we normally use could, even when we are talking about specific
occasions:
-3- Could
Could is an auxiliary verb, a modal auxiliary verb. We use could to talk about:
The main verb is always the bare infinitive (infinitive without "to").
Use of Could
We use could to talk about what was possible in the past, what we were able or free to do:
We use could (positive) and couldn't (negative) for general ability in the past.
We often use could in a question to ask somebody to do something. The use of could in this way is fairly polite
(formal):