Learn English – Present tense and past tense

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Is there a difference between these two? Which one is more common?

I was wondering if I ( needed / need ) to take my own towel.

Best Answer

Strictly speaking I think this is probably a duplicate of Past tense for indicating long distance (a somewhat misleading title, since the OP is actually asking about the significance of the verb tense in, for example, "What is/was your name?").

The answer is that in almost all contexts, the verb tense in OP's example sentence has nothing to do with Past/Present. Native speakers frequently use "I was wondering..." instead of "I wonder...", because the past tense metaphorically "distances" the speaker from the utterance - which has the net effect of being more deferential, hesitant, polite, formal.

Partly for the same reason, and partly just because it sounds more "consistent", we often describe "the thing wondered about" in the past tense as well. Hence...

1: "I was wondering what your name was"
usually means exactly the same as
2: "I wonder what your name is"

...but to most native speakers, #2 might often seem rather brusque, if not actually rude.