adrianus wrote:[quote=""furrykef"]Nonetheless, I think applying these rules to "his blood was/is a beautiful color" is a bit pedantic.
This is pretty funny. If it's me you're referring to, furrykef, I'm not being pedantic. When I said "Dracula said [that] his blood was a beautiful colour" (I didn't put "was" in bold in the original, by the way) that's how I speak English![/quote]
Yeah, my post is worded a bit clumsily because I think I misunderstood your point before I went back and re-read it, and it would have been difficult to revise it without rewriting it. And I'm a lazy bastard.
I maintain that "is" would still be good English, even if it happens that you don't speak that way.
adrianus wrote:furrykef wrote:It's still obvious that you wouldn't translate "Dracula said that the color of his blood is beautiful" as "Dīxit Dracula colōrem sanguinis eius pulchrum futūrum esse" just because "is" is "in the future" relative to "said".
I'm asking myself where that came from.
I was just pointing out that the tense thing shouldn't be taken too literally.
However, how is "is" in the future relative to "said"?
It isn't, really, which is why I put "in the future" in quotes. I just meant that "is" is present tense, and "said" is past tense, so syntactically (but not semantically), "is" is in the future relative to "said".