German Question

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Regarding sentence no. 1: They are so near, they should be almost in range for touching each other.

Regarding sentence no. 2: Könnten Sie sich beherrschen and Würden Sie sich beherrschen können are equal in what they express. The first könnten is Konjunktiv II, while the other would be the Ersatzform. So, I guess it's not a modal ...

The second sentence I labelled "spoken only" because it's really bad. In a book, the sentence would be Könnten Sie sich beherrschen, wenn man Ihnen dies vorwerfen würde / vorwürfe? Lamentably, the Konjunktiv II is loosing ground and gives in to the Ersatzform. You receive strange looks when you use the strong forms of the verbs apart from the obvious ever fitting würde, könnte, möchte, ginge, täte, hätte, wollte.

Wollten Sie das machen müssen? Das möchte ich niemals machen müssen. Would you like to be forced to do that? I'd never ever want to have to do that. If wollen is a modal verb, but I think this could be the case.