Wish

I'm not a teacher but I'll try to answer the questions. I hope moderators would correct my answers if they are wrong.

[1] I wish I had learnt Spanish at school. ---> The truth is you did not learn Spanish at school.
[2] I wish I learnt Spanish at school. ---> The truth is you are not learning Spanish at school.
[3a] I wish I understood what they said. ---> The truth is you do not understand what they said in the past.
[3b] I wish I understood what they are saying. ---> The truth is you do not understand what they are now saying.
[4a] She wishes we could come. ---> She wants you to come but you can't.
[4b] She wishes us to come ---> She wants you to come. Neutral about whether you can or not.
[5] I wished he came. ---> You wanted him to come at a past time but the truth is he did not come then.
It was high time for us to go.

paco

Paco's exegesis sounds good to me, certainly.

7) 'It was time we went home.'-- 'We went home' modifies 'time': both occur simultaneously, so 'had gone' would be wrong.

8) 'In case someone should ask, I was never here.'-- If they had asked already, there would logically be no 'in case'. (I presume that your dilemma is between 'asked' and 'should ask'; 'X should asked' is impossible on other grounds.)

9) 'We warned them for fear (that) they should fall.'-- Both with and without the 'that' are fine; it is clear both ways.

10) 'We warned them so that they wouldn’t fall.'-- shall/should is for first person only in this usage.

In your ( 8) X 'In case someone ASKED, I was never here.'-- 'in case' means 'if' (possibility); but 'asked' is past tense (the asking already happened), so there is no logical possibility that the listener could subsequently tell them that 'she was never here'!

Your only choice is 'in case someone SHOULD ASK, I was never here'. Then, the asking remains in the future and there is still a possibility for the listener to say 'she was never here'.


In (10), the correct choices are:

'We warned them so that they wouldn't fall.'
They warned us so that we shouldn't / wouldn't fall.' ('we' is first person plural)

In your sentence, as I said previously, 'shall/should' is for first person only in this usage' (and is generally considered formal as such).

'Would/should' here is not a question of the subjunctive. 'Should' appears as a substitute or alternate expression for the mandative subjunctive in such sentences as 'they insisted that I should hurry up' (where the subjunctive form is 'they insisted that I hurry up'). 'Would/should' also appear in conditional sentences, some of which also contain subjunctive forms, and this may be the source of your confusion. Here are two more examples, with the subjunctive form of 'be' in the 'if'-clause:

'If I were you, I should/would hurry up.' ('I' is first person singular)
'If he were you, he would hurry up.'

A/ In 'if'-clauses of conditional sentences we can have either the subjunctive or indicative mood:

If I catch you (present indicative), I will eat you.
If I caught you (present subjunctive), I would eat you.


1) If I / he were (present subjunctive) rich, I would /should // he would (only) (conditional) buy a yacht.

2) If he comes (present indicative), we will / shall // they will (future) go and sail on the Thames.

3) If he had a yacht (present subjunctive = he doesn't have one), we would/should // he would (only) (conditional) sail across the Mediterranean.

4) If he had had (past subjunctive) a boat, we would/should have sailed (perfect conditional) across the Mediterranean Sea.


B/ Do we sometimes need a subjunctive after the expression SO THAT ?

Are you speaking of the archaic form 'so that he arrive safely, he could not care of the condition of his yacht'?