French verb form for unconfirmed facts, illustrated by the Snowden asylum report

What I also like is that French journalists simply stuff their "hard-hitting" pieces with the conditionnel, the conditional mood, though not with the particle "by" as in Russian, but literally with the particle "allegedly"

It is a dodge to avoid complaints should the facts described fail to be confirmed.

That is, they write "Edward Snowden has allegedly accepted Venezuela's offer of asylum. He has allegedly agreed." In this way they both report a piece of information and appear not to claim that it is real, instead of saying that the information is unconfirmed or may not correspond to reality.

The recipe is this: there is no need to fret over the impeccability of the facts, you simply take the base of the futur simple and add the imparfait endings (ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient), season the text with "allegedly", and not a gnat could find fault with it

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French verb form for unconfirmed facts, illustrated by the Snowden asylum report

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

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