2nd conditional tense semantics :D

[TutorT]

Hey Everybody,
Is it grammatically ok to say -
1. If I told you that "I love you", would you say that you are mine?
If so must I have the quotation marks around " I love you"?
or must I lose the "that"-
2. If I told you " I love you", would you say that you are mine?
And if using "that" -
3. If I told you that I loved you, would you say that you are mine.
For me all 3 are fine but my natural way to say it is 1 but I feel this is the most questionable grammatically given the mixed tense.
I'm interested to hear what you think... ; )
ta
Grainger

[Joe]

tell someone that something
say to someone "something"

Hope this answers part of your question. :D

[TutorT]

yes thanks, I guess I was using the quotes with "that" to justify using love in the present tense. Maybe the only truly correct way to express the meaning I want is to change'told' to 'said' - If I said "I love you" would you say that you are mine.
Because these are lyrics to a song the original "if I told you that I love you, would you say that you are mine", I think, sounds better poetically.
To me using loved allows for the interpretation that the love is not current but in the past sometime, so the line doesn't make sense - if I said I loved you sometime in the past, why would you say you are mine now? :D
tis a tangled web I weave :D

[Joe]

Tangled web indeed :)

Perhaps the confusion arises because English tenses don't necessarily correlate to time:

"If I won a million euro" (past tense) refers to the future. ;-)

Why try to reinvent the wheel?
- If I said that I loved you would you say that you were mine? (both actions in present)
- If I had said that I loved you would you have said that you were mine? (both actions in past)

[TutorT]

YES! Thank you for that supreme effort, that's it. That sounds much more natural to me. I's was gettin' me ares and me weres mixed up :D

[natedigby]

Tangled web indeed :)

Perhaps the confusion arises because English tenses don't necessarily correlate to time:

"If I won a million euro" (past tense) refers to the future. ;-)

Why try to reinvent the wheel?
- If I said that I loved you would you say that you were mine? (both actions in present)
- If I had said that I loved you would you have said that you were mine? (both actions in past)

This was the perfect answer for the topic. Very clear and very precise.

Thanks!

Nate

[TutorT]

Hey I finished the 2nd conditional song. Thank you for your help :)
If you're interested you can see a sample here - http://tutortunes.net/tutortunes/2010/0 ... nditional/