A: Your French is horrible.
B: Oh really? Then, seems like I've been deceiving myself into thinking that I could speak it when I actually couldn't.
This "could" is the result of the sequence of tenses?
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3 Answers
Here, "could" functions as the past form of "can".
That sentence, however, is unnatural, and arguably ungrammatical.
It would be much better either to use "can" rather than "could" since present perfect continuous has a present meaning, or to use almost any past tense, like:
- ...I deceived myself...
- ...I was deceiving myself...
- ...I had been deceiving myself...
- ...I had deceived myself...
My intuition is that this is "could" as the subjunctive - it is referring to something that it is possible, but not true.
Compare "if I could speak French, that would be good".
I thought I could speak it [when I tried to] but I can't. [now]
That's fine.
NYT
She added: “I thought I could win. I didn’t expect to win.”
The New Yorker
“I really got lost. And I didn’t have my truck. I thought I could hitchhike back home.
ludwig.guru examples from the press_spoken English
I have been deceiving myself into thinking I could [at some point in the past].
I have been deceiving myself into thinking I can. [now].
could means: was able to in these examples, a past tense.
