Grammar

Modal Verbs and their Equivalents

Verbs	Present	Past	Future
can	can be able to	could was } able to were	will be able to
may	may be allowed to	might was } allowed to were	will be allowed to
must	must have to be to	had to was } to were	will have to will be to

Modal Verbs “Shall” and “Will”

I. The modal verb “Shall” (past: should) is used to express compulsion, obligation in commands, regulations, proclamations, pacts, treaties contracts, charters, etc:

You shall do it immediately. – Ты должен сделать это немедленно.

The award of the Arbitration Court shall be final and binding upon the both parties. – Решением Арбитражного суда является обязательным к исполнению для обеих сторон.

Shall is used with all persons in question when asking for instructions:

What shall be done with this document? – Что нужно сделать с этими документами?

Shall I sign the contract? – Я должен подписать контракт?

The verb “Shall” is used to express promise, warning or threat:

You shall be responsible for the delay of payment. – Ты несёшь ответственность за задержку оплаты.

II. The modal verb “Will” (past: would) is used to express will, intention or insistence:

We will never agree to these terms. – Мы никогда не согласимся на эти условия.

Will (would) is used to express polite requests and inquiries:

Will you inform us about the reasonable prices? – Сообщите нам, пожалуйста, об умеренных ценах.

Will (would) is used to express habit and is commonly used in literary descriptions:

They will (would) meet and discuss news. – Они (бывало) встречались и обсуждали новости.

The verb “will” (would) may be used to express insistence or resistance:

The judge will not accept the objection. – Судья не принимал протест.

Unit XII Text I. Transportation as Factor of Economic Development

Transportation has always been a vital factor in the cultural and economic development of the human race and the effort to improve transportation has occupied much of man’s time and effort through the centuries. Nations, regions, cities, industries, and business firms have grown or failed to grow because of the presence or absence of adequate transportation facilities. Those areas of the world that have developed culturally and economically the earliest and fastest have been those that had adequate transportation. Hence the great old cities of the world were all located where adequate and long distance water transportation was available. Those areas without adequate water transportation had to wait the coming of other modes of transportation before their development could really begin. In modern times we find that the interior of the continent of Africa is still to a extent underdeveloped culturally and economically partly because it has been in the past, and still is to some degree, inaccessible.

The only access to villages, agricultural and other productive areas in Africa are earth roads. They account for a considerable proportion of the road network, but most of them are generally operable only during the dry season. A large proportion of the fleet remains immobilized for long periods, a situation which adversely affects the overall economic performance of developing Africa.

The Africa railway system is composed of several short independent national systems of different gauges, which makes it difficult to promote socioeconomic integration at the national, subregional and regional levels. Also, because of the old age of rails, the poor alignment and the low construction standards, the average operating speed of the railway system is only about 40 km/h. the railway traffic is also very low.

In the area of air transport, while 40 foreign airlines and 51African airlines serve the continent, only 20 per cent of the total air transport operations involve direct links among African countries. In maritime transport, the volume of Africa’s seaborne trade has increased only marginally. The low level of the shipping capacity of Africa explains the very large share of Africa’s seaborne trade handled by foreign vessels.

So, it appears that economic progress is inevitably tied to transportation. This is basically because trade or commerce cannot flourish without an adequate transportation system at reasonable cost and without trade there can be little in the way of industrial activity and the employment and that this brings about.