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Bring Back the Subjunctive! | ||
Tags: Morphology | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 17 of 29 01 June 2012 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, there is a very weird usage that Americans (some Americans anyway) adopt, which I think is a way of avoiding or simplifying the subjunctive, and I'll try to illustrate is as follows:- Classic English/British usage would be: "If I had chosen to study Scandinavian at the age of 19, I would be fluent now." (or "Had I chosen to study Scandinavaian...etc"). And you will see an American write: "If I would have chosen to study Scandinavian...". I mean....ugh! It just looks ugly and unnecessary. I have a feeling that educated Americans of a certain age will follow the British English pattern, and younger ones the latter. But you see the latter (or variants) on the internet, all the time. Sorry if I have oversimplified. I'm a big fan of the subjunctive, and think that we use it all the time without realising it, simply because we use constructions that are similar to indicative-like constructions in forming it, which is not necessarily the case in other languages. Vivat subjunctive! (or something like that...). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5507 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 18 of 29 01 June 2012 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I would probably never use "if I would have" in writing, but it's a fairly natural part
of my speech especially in its contracted form "if I'd've", existing in free variation with "had I" and "if I'd". My gut says I use it about 10-20% of the time. If my intuition is* correct, I do this more for prosodic reasons rather than anything else. *I would have written be here, had the present subjunctive not died out in this context! edit: wrote->written, the shame! Edited by egill on 03 June 2012 at 6:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4700 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 19 of 29 02 June 2012 at 3:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4681 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 20 of 29 02 June 2012 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
And sounds worse, but had I known you were going to malign Americans this way I'd have posted sooner. (I'm kidding.) That said, "Had I known…" feels like a very natural thing to say. And I'm quite American. Like you I find it ugly to not use the subjunctive. Especially where it doesn't impede rhythm, as in these songs I've heard too many times: "And if I was a train, I'd be a bullet train." or "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" To further uglify the situation, the prettier construction is metrically the same and would not affect the songs so far as the music went. It would make my ears bleed just a shade less. The former example is particularly egregious as it is in music aimed at children. Who slipped that by the editor (who presumably has a college degree of one sort or another)? The latter example, if I'm not wrong, was inflicted on the world by Brits. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4941 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 21 of 29 03 June 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I would have wrote? WROTE? Subjunctive isn't the biggest problem here. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5594 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 22 of 29 13 July 2012 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Personally I rather like the "if I would have" construction, I find it rather pretty, though I've never used it myself. I don't think it's used much in the UK, though I have heard it. Here in the UK what you will hear all the time is, "if I'd've" more often written as "if I'd of" (don't ask!), but it's not short for "if I would have". In UK English (if I remember right) this "of" appears to be evolving into some kind of clitic to mark hypotheses. To my ear "If I'd've" bought it (and yes I know it's technically incorrect and I'd never write and rarely say such a thing) sounds more emphatically hypothetical than "if I'd bought it". Again, I rather like it and bet it will be standard UK English in 50 years. :-)
In the UK there is massive confusion between past tense forms and past participles. Living in the north of England (but not being from there) I notice people use a past tense form instead of a past participle all the time (e.g. I've et (= ate) it). This is one modern development that i do find ugly! I worry that one day I might start to copy them. Edited by Random review on 13 July 2012 at 5:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| GRagazzo Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4772 days ago 115 posts - 168 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 23 of 29 13 July 2012 at 7:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I actually like that there is no subjunctive in English, it would just make the language
more confusing. And I think some languages are learning from us. For instance, in Italy a some people don't know how to use the subjunctive correctly and will sometimes use the indicative instead. Of course this is only in colloquial conversation, it is still used often in formal writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4941 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 24 of 29 13 July 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Uh... R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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