'As a child I wasn't able to swim.' Wrong?

[Mehrgan]

Hi all,

This book, on grammar, suggests 'able to' cannot be used for a general ability in the past. Are the following sentences wrong then?

1. As a child I wasn't able to swim.
2. My sister wasn't able to spell very well when she was a child.


This sounds too strict to me, as if I've heard these forms many times before.

 

[Rover_KE]

The sentences are just fine.

Please state the source which says they are not. 'This book, on grammar' is of no use as an attribution.

Rover

 

[5jj]

When I was preparing my (as yet unpublished) magnum opus on verbs, I looked into the idea that:

I couldn't swim suggested that I lacked the ability, presumably because I had never learnt to swim, and
I wasn't able to swim suggested that it was not possible for me to swim, perhaps because there was no swimming pool near my house.

I found many examples to suggest that some people do use the verbs in this way. Unfortunately, I found quite a few examples to suggest that others don't. Modals, as F R Palmer once noted, are messy.