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The verbs will and shall, when used as future markers, are largely interchangeable with regard to literal meaning. Generally, however, will is far more common than shall. Use of shall is normally a marked usage, typically indicating formality or seriousness and (if not used with a first person subject) expressing a colored meaning as
An example of a future tense form is the French achètera, meaning "will buy", derived from the verb acheter ("to buy"). The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under ...
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
There was once a swimmer in Northumbria heard shouting: "I will drown and nobody shall save me!" The coroner's jury was divided at the inquest. The English jurors said that the man had plainly ...
Clearly this is an exceptional case where shall is better. --Sluggoster 09:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC) As for shall vs should, my (northwestern US) ears prefer shall but the difference is very slight. Shall focuses on your magnimony, and you may already be half-standing when you say it.
A transitive form exists in AmE, with a different meaning: to catch somebody up means that the subject will help the object catch up, rather the opposite of the BrE transitive meaning. cater ("to provide food and service"): Intransitive in BrE, transitive or intransitive in AmE (to cater for a banquet/to cater a banquet).
Modal auxiliary verbs, such as the English words may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, and should, are often used to express modality, especially in the Germanic languages. Ability, desirability, permission, obligation, and probability can all be exemplified by the usage of auxiliary modal verbs in English:
Italic text== Shall vs. Will == Shortly after explaining that the will/shall distinction has never described common usage anywhere in the world, the article goes into a length discussion that makes this distinction at excruciating length (although at least it leaves out the joke about the