Tell you what: The next time some know it all junior hight student whips out a dictionary to prove you wrong, put your book away and utter the following sentence:
“That’s the way I say it, that’s the way my friends and family say it, and that’s the way everyone I know says it. If you think I’m wrong, fine. Say it your way.”
That should shut her up in about 2 seconds. Don’t fumble around for technical explanations. These kids grew up learning awkward formal grammar from a book with a Chinese English teacher and a horrifying percentage of the stuff is simply wrong . End of story.
Remember that you are the native speaker and you don’t have to necessarily explain everything by the book. Especially with intermediate junior high students who are developing an attitude.
Hear hear more beer over here! Just tell em you’ve been speaking the language all your life and you bloody well KNOW certain things at least, and you don’t give a hairy rats ass what their antiquated, Taiwanese produced grammar texts have to say regarding the isssue. NExt!
Seriously I get people saying things such as “How to spell grammar?” and insisting that it is correct for the sad reason that they were “taught” that it is correct. I explain the thing grammatically and every other which way as well as I can and if that is not good enough I just say “ABSOLUTELY no bloody way O.K. This is my language. I’ve been hearing it and reading it and speaking it my whole long life and there are some things I KNOW to be standard or not and while the reason’s for their being standard or not may be extrordinarily complex, even for an educated native speaker, the fact remains that I know what is standard and there is SURELY something to be gained from that!” Whew!
The technical grammatical name for this is the “subjunctive mood”.
Other examples:
“I suggested that he go too.”
“I wish I were…”[/quote]
So “If I were you…” and “I wish I were…” are in the subjunctive mood but “If I was you…” and “I wish I was…” are unreal conditional, along with sentences like “If I had wings I would fly to…”?
To me this seems like an aspect of English grammar that is, if not confused, then at very least confusing.
Collins says that the subjunctive is a clause expressing a wish or suggestion made by using the base form of the verb or “were” and gives the following example: “I wish I were somewhere else.” It is not possible, of course, to be somewhere else at the exact time of speaking and exasperation over that fact is the intended meaning of that sentence. In the “I wish I were you” example we are obviously talking about an unreal situation and that is why “were” is used, but in fact it could just as reasonably be “was” using the past form to indicate that something is contrary to fact, much in the way we might say “If I wasn’t so bald the girls would like me more,” or “If I had a hair implant girls would like me more,” suggesting by the choice of “had” and “would” that this will not likely happen, but notice I could just as easily say “If I have a hair implant girls will like me more,” indicating by the use of “have” and “will” that I might in fact endure such a procedure.
The next example is demonstrates the suggestion aspect of the subjunctive mood: “He asked that they be moved”. From Shrampfer I found: The teacher demands that we be on time," and “I insisted that he pay me the money”.
What cofuses me in all of this is that there seems to be no relationship between the use of were for the unreal conditional in “If I were/was you I’d jump off a bridge,” and the use of the simple form of the verb in suggestions such as “He asked that they be moved”.
I imagine I am just missing something here but I’ve been missing it for awhile now and it is beginning to bug me. If someone could clear this one up for me I’d be most grateful. Thanks.
Bob, I don’t know why so many books give such confusing examples for the subjunctive moods.
There are two actually, the present and the past. Unlike many things that we understand in the sense of “past” and “present” things are a little different here.
In the past subjunctive, were is used for all persons to indicate a hypothetical or nonexistant situation.
Ex: If I were as rich as you, (a nonexistant situation) I could buy every Rolex in this store.
If my class were as good as yours, (a non existant situation) I would be very happy.
Note that many people have digressed into lazy English and now say that the use of was instead of were is OK. In my opinion, this is just a classic example of dumbing down English for people who think that using correct grammar is somehow an insult to their intelligence.
If the use of was instead of were is correct in the past subjunctive, replace it every time you use a conditional phrase in the past subjunctive and you will soon realize how foolish and illogical it sounds.
As for the present subjunctive, there is always the sense of a demand or request. This is followed by the word that.
Ex: The teacher demands that all her students wear yellow shoes.
Our main office demands that we be given three weeks paid vacation.
Her father insists that she always say what is on her mind.
In the present subjunctive, the root form of the verb is used for all persons, first, second, third, plural or singluar.
Thanks Rube but I still don’t get it. Your past subjunctive sounds more like simple present tense, unreal conditional aspect and some strange phenomenon people refer to as subjunctive mood.
Past tense, unreal conditional aspect, who knows what mood would be “If she had been rich I might have let her take me out”.
And I still don’t see any relationship btwn any of this and and the request or demand with “that”.
If you were me then I’d have to be you otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Unless of course you were me and I was rambling rube and rambling was you in which case this whole thing would be going round and round round and round round and round :loco:
If you were me, and I were you, you’d be talking to who? If I were you and you was me then you would be me sometime in the past and I would be you sometime between an unspecified time in the past and an unspecified time in the future if the time weren’t/wasn’t/isn’t specified.
If I were a retard, I’d keep posting on this thread.
The subjunctive is dying out in English. That’s why you can find so many examples where both the subjunctive and the indicative sound OK.
It’s just like the “who/whom” problem. It is a dying grammar point in English, so you will find lots of examples where - technically, according to old grammar - ‘whom’ should be used, but where many educated native speakers use ‘who.’
[quote=“bob”]Thanks Rube but I still don’t get it. Your past subjunctive sounds more like simple present tense, unreal conditional aspect and some strange phenomenon people refer to as subjunctive mood.
Past tense, unreal conditional aspect, who knows what mood would be “If she had been rich I might have let her take me out”.
And I still don’t see any relationship btwn any of this and and the request or demand with “that”.
Sorry.[/quote]
Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Since I’m not you, I probably won’t worry about it too much either. More years ago than I care to remember, Miss Meadows required all her ninth grade English students to know how to use the past and present subjunctive.
To what end? I guess she was a visionary and knew someday there would be a thing called the internet and forums like this.
[quote=“bababa”]The subjunctive is dying out in English. That’s why you can find so many examples where both the subjunctive and the indicative sound OK.
It’s just like the “who/whom” problem. It is a dying grammar point in English, so you will find lots of examples where - technically, according to old grammar - ‘whom’ should be used, but where many educated native speakers use ‘who.’[/quote]
It’s dying out much more precipitously in Great Britain than in the USA. Though almost extinct in the U.K., the sense of subjunctive is still strong on the other side of the Atlantic. American newspapers, books, and magazines also keep the whom form intact except in a few instances, like at the beginning of sentences: “Who are you talking to?” But this has been so for almost a century.
. End of story.
