Can you tell me which option is more natural in this English sentence?
I'm sorry to trouble you but I was wondering what
(A) time it is
(B) the time has been
The whole story is that this multiple-choice question comes from a placement test for a coursebook. The complete question is as follows
I’m sorry to trouble you but I was wondering what
(A) time it is
(B) the time has been
(C) is the time?
(D) was the time?
I excluded (C) and (D) as ungrammatical and chose (A) as the most natural-sounding to me, but the answer key says that the correct answer is (B), which doesn't sound right to me. Now I'm a little bit confused.
This coursebook is for the Polish market and I am Polish.
Best Answer
If you're asking the time, (A) is closer to what a native speaker might say, but it would be more likely to occur as . . . what the time is. However, because the first part of the sentence contains the past tense was, the second part would probably also be in the past tense: . . . what the time was.