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Are there any shades of meaning between the use of the past continuous, present simple and past simple in the following sentences?
He was saying that he is going to leave soon.
He says that he is going to leave soon.
He said that he is going to leave soon.
I know is that all three can refer to the present, but I cannot feel the difference. The first one sounds to me that what one was saying hasn't completed. It is only a guess, though.
The past continuous:
The past continuous (also called past progressive) is a verb tense which is used to show that an ongoing past action was happening at a specific moment of interruption, or that two ongoing actions were happening at the same time. Read on for detailed descriptions, examples, and past continuous exercises.
Past Continuous Forms The past continuous is formed using was/were + present participle. Questions are indicated by inverting the subject and was/were. Negatives are made with not.
Statement: You were studying when she called. Question: Were you studying when she called? Negative: You were not studying when she called.
The trick is this: Even if there is not actual "when" or "while" or "as" in the sentence, these are always implied.
This is always the idea of something that defines the moment in time when the was/verbING is being used.
So, "He was saying that he is going to leave soon." would imply either:
Those are examples of implied time limiters.
The he said/he says examples are obvious. One is present; one is past.
The present continuous can be used with a simple past tense.
He said it in the past, but the game has not yet been played. If the game had been played, he would have said:
English page https://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/pastcontinuous.html
He said is the simplest way of describing the words that someone spoke. This is the most common. The actual words spoken would be "I'm going to leave soon". You could use this to describe what someone said at any time, even after they have left.
He says is talking about what the person means, or the ideas that they have right now. It would be used to imply "If you were to ask him right now, this is what he would say". In practice, there are many situations in which both "He said" and He says" are both possible. But if the person has already left, then you couldn't use "He says".
He was saying adds the continuous sense to he said, it suggests that he spoke at length, and so "he is going to leave soon" is just a summary, not directly quoted speech.
