Re: Immediate future tense

Nik Taylor wrote:
> "I'm about to ..." would be that, if I understand you correctly.  How
> about future-past?  Does anyone have that?  By future-past I mean "I was
> going to ..." or "I was about to ...", that is, at the point of time
> being referred to, the action had not yet occured, but it has occured by
> now, or would've occured.  For example, "I was about to call him when
> the phone rang".
That's essentially what the conditional tense is in Spanish and French
(and probably other Romance languages). In fact, the book about French I
have on my lap right now calls it "future in the past". The conditional
translates to "would ..." in English.