I need some clarification. I can't remember the name for this tense but, whenever you say something like, if I were good at building houses or if I were a fox, you always say 'were,' right? It's never "If I was you."

That tense always uses "were," correct?

It's not really a 'tense'. It's the subjunctive, used for hypothetical situations.

"If I was..." is acceptable in spoken English. Verbs other than 'to be' are used in the simple past - "If I built a house...". There's also "If I had been..." (past perfect, where we'd expect past tense) for imaginary pasts.

Other examples of the subjunctive include:

I wish I were...
I wish you would...
It's time we went...
I'd rather you went...

And...

He insisted that I do...
It's important that you be...

A:"I could have sworn I saw you in Waukegan one day last week." B: "If I was, it seems I should remember it"That seems more correct to me than "if I were". No?

quote:

Originally posted by frankvan:
A:"I could have sworn I saw you in Waukegan one day last week." B: "If I was, it seems I should remember it"That seems more correct to me than "if I were". No?

"If I were" suggests conjecture or supposition and is first person singular in the present tense of the subjunctive . It is followed by the conditional form of a verb: " If I were Queen I could dissolve parliament now"[but I am not the Queen]; "If I were there I could discover the reasons" [but I am not there]; " If I were a rich man [diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle dum ] I would.." [but I'm not, being but a milkman]

Your " If I was (in Waukegan last week)" is referring to the past. We don't have a past tense in the subjunctive voice in current English.Perhaps we did once: " If I would have been there.." is not heard nowadays We haven't got a proper subjunctive like Latin has, with all its tenses and forms, but grammarians took the name for the nearest we have to it.

In everyday speech we sometimes say "If I was there now.." when we ought to use the form "If I were..". We tend to use 'was' as an intensifying word. " He is doing what to her, you say? If I was there now I'd tell him off, all right!" which is to imagine that the speaker is really there . It sounds much stronger and angrier than " If I were there now"

I see it the other way, Frank. Don't conditional phrases require were?

Ex: If I were he, I wouldn't open that door.

I realize that spoken English often doesn't follow the rules, but I find it difficult (in most cases) not to use proper grammar even in casual conversation. Unfortunately, I no longer remember all the terms and rules for situations like this one.

It's dying. Only boring old gits like I am ever use it in everyday speech, or even in written English unless you're writing something terribly formal. It was not native to Anglo Saxon, it was modeled upon Latin, and introduced in public (private schools, in North America) schools centuries ago, a sickeningly knowledgeable friend told me.

quote:

Originally posted by babthrower:
It was not native to Anglo Saxon, it was modeled upon Latin, and introduced in public (private schools, in North America) schools centuries ago, a sickeningly knowledgeable friend told me.

Please tell your sickeningly knowledgeable friend that they may be more sickening than knowledgeable

'Were' as the plural form of the past tense of 'be' comes to us from Old English werun the past tense plural of wesan, 'to be'.It is also used as a subjunctive and, as such, is a remnant of the past subjunctive in English.[Source: Collins' English Dictionary ]So we now use 'were' in 'they were', the past tense plural of the indicative mood and 'was' in 'I was' for the present tense singular of the indicative mood. However in the subjunctive mood we use 'were' for the singular in '[if] I were'.The Public Schools had, and have, nothing to do with that. 'Were' was being used for the first person form in the subjunctive mood in English long before the Public Schools ever existed . The schools did not invent the 'subjunctive' in English and the subjunctive form of 'to be' in the first person singular was there already, used by everybody (but, like Moliere's character who found that he had been speaking prose all his life, they never knew that).

The grammarians who first tried to find or establish 'rules' of grammar for our language did use terms which came from Latin in an attempt to label and define constructions and forms which they saw in English.This was never going to be an easy task. They were all familiar with Latin grammar.'Subjunctive'is itself a term from Latin grammar (modus subjunctivus).The schools did not invent other uses and forms of this mood either e.g. in "be that as it may" and "God help you".It would be a bit mean to blame them for 'if I were'simply because all their pupils knew that that was the subjunctive


[DG :I now claim the maiku memorial prize ! ]

It is rightly yours, Fred.

The Latin grammar that was artificially forced on English was the "about whom are you talking?" construction, with the preposition sticking unaturally to its object at the beginning of a question or adjective clause. This was the thing up with which Winston Churchill would not put.

Is "If you be brave enough..." a genuine older form, or just fake 'ye olde' English?

Man, you guys are good. A very entertaining discussion. I agree with FP's explanation of frank's example.

quote:

Only boring old gits like I am ever use it in everyday speech, or even in written English unless you're writing something terribly formal.

I know plenty of people who still use the subjunctive mood when called for. Standard 20th C English grammar may be dying but is not dead yet. It's only a matter of time, however, because teachers, newscasters, and other language role models no longer support the rules once taught in elementary school. Would that they could.

Yeah, I don't agree that standard English grammar is dead yet either.

Thanks everyone.

Unhand that laurel crown, Fast Freddie! It takes time to build that kind of rep!

I'm trying to think of how I can tell my s.k. 'friend' he stands corrected, but I dread to do so because a challenge to one of his pronouncements usually is met with a droning diversionary lecture on some really arcane side issue. (Actually, speaking of Maiku, it was my friend's voice I used to hear when I read Maiku's posts!) Come to think of it, I won't mention it to him at all, and spare myself the lecture. I think the reference below explains why I was confused. So after all, my s.k. friend may have said something like that, and I misunderstood him. Yes, that's likely it.

My Oxford Companion to the English Language says there was such a system in Old English, e.g. Ne hē ealu ne drince opp wīn "nor shall he drink ale or wine". So you're right about the subjunctive not having been introduced merely on the Latin model.

But I maintain it is dying, as surely as are 'traditional' spellings which no longer represent phonetically the spoken word. And good riddance.

As the article in the Companion goes on to say,

quote:

... but in modern English there are few distinctive subjunctive forms and the use of the term is controversial. Grammarians have traditionally described English as if it had a subjunctive system comparable to Latin and French, with present and past subjunctive tenses,. This approach poses problems, because the 'present' subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses referring to both present and past time. They are demanding that we pay now and They demanded that we pay there and then. In form, this subjunctive is identical with the base of the verb (the bare infinitive) which means that, when the reference is to present time, it only differs from the indicative (except with the verb be) in the third person singular: We suggest that he leave soon as against They say he leaves at dawn tomorrow.

With past reference, the difference from the indicative is noticeable for all persons, as in We suggested he leave.

The formulaic use, as in Long live the queen! is quite arbitrary.

And in the past subjunctive, were is the only verb it affects, and only in the first and third persons singular, and only with present or future references.

If I were you ... (instead of indicative was).

But in the second person, the verb is the same:
If you were Charles you would mow your grass uses were in the subjunctive mood. When you were Charles you mowed your grass uses were in the indicative mood.

So we manage to convey the subjunctive 'sense' quite well in most cases by simply using the past indicative.

So Frank is just ahead of his time. Form will follow function, and the subjunctive will die.

(But probably not before I do.)