Guest: Dear teachers,What is the difference between "I should like to ..." and "I would like to ...". "Would like to" sounds more natural to me. Thanks in advanced. Hello Guest OED says the way as below, though I myself feel it is only valid to BrE. [Should] With verbs of liking, preference, etc., should in the first person (and interrogatively in the second) is regarded as more correct than would, though this is often used. 1779 Boswell Johnson (1904) II. 308 Should you not like to see Dublin, Sir? 1785 J. Trusler Mod. Times III. 81 Should you like any thing up stairs, or would you prefer it in the kitchen? 1838 Macaulay Ess., Sir W. Temple (1843) III. 98 Corneille was said to unite the merits of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We should like to see a Prometheus after Corneille's fashion. 1860 Ruskin Unto this Last i. §21, I should like the reader to be very clear about this. 1862 G. C. Lewis Lett. (1870) 418 One should like to know what it was that they numbered. 1869 Freeman in W. R. W. Stephens Life (1895) I. 427, I should like to have stayed longer at Noyon. 1883 L. Oliphant Altiora Peto I. 8, I should much preferred to have seen you there. [/quote] paco Senior Member 4,095  In Japan today even dogs are learning how to bow-wow in English. Yes, it is true that "I would like" is more and more frequent...  I'm glad to help, but I'm not a native! And please excuse my typos... It sounds more natural, I'd suggest, because we tend to speak of our desires/wants in more decided tones. "I would like to" equals "I want to" but it is more deferential, more polite, less demanding. Just as "want to" says high certainty, so does "I would like to". "should" and "probably" weaken the main epistemic meaning of 'would' and as you can see, neither approaches the much more common "would like to". Further, while 'would' is a normal neutral, "should" is a more formal, deferential, probably because it denotes a lesser degree of certainty. Googled: 14,900,000 English pages for "I would like to". 441,000 English pages for "I should like to" 2,110 English pages for "I probably would like to". Want to 26,200,000 for "I want to". 3,780 English pages for "I probably want to." 79,000 English pages for "I may want to". 169,000 English pages for "I might want to". Regular Member 849 I notice that 33% of webwide hits for "I should like to" are UK-only, against a mere 7.4% of webwide hits for "I would like to". On the strength of my own exposure to spoken BrE, I would say that 'I should like...' suggests the following situations: addresses by CEOs, chairmen, directors; parliamentary debates; speeches by public figures (at the non-celebrity end of the 'public figure' market); public inquiries; civil-servant-ese; royal speeches; academic contexts, etc. In such situations, when someone says 'I should like to propose a toast', 'I should like to thank', 'I should like to draw your attention to', 'I should like to mention', no one has any doubt that the speaker is entitled to do what he says he would like to do. (It may well be classifiable as 'assumed deference', of course.) There is probably also a higher-than-usual awareness among such speakers of the notion that 'should' should be used in place of 'would' in the 1st person (cf. the OED's comment). As I say, the above only applies to spoken BrE: in written English, I would be less inclined to notice 'I should like', or 'I should' for 'I would'. (Untested hypothesis: if an evidently low-status BrE says 'I should like...', it may be taken by other BrEs as a case of 'putting on airs'; or parody.) MrP Veteran Member 12,806   ...opella forensis / adducit febris... (Untested hypothesis: if an evidently low-status BrE says 'I should like...', it may be taken by other BrEs as a case of 'putting on airs'; or parody.) <<<<<<<<<<< Those low status BrEs actually start with the British PM, Mr Blair and the lawmakers who failed in their jobs. There is nothing or no one so low in status as those who would kill innocents based on lies. Regular Member 849 Hmm. I think my comments may have been misinterpreted. Perhaps: (Untested hypothesis: if a BrE microserf says 'I should like...', it may be taken by other BrE microserfs as a grave case of 'putting on airs'; or parody.) MrP Veteran Member 12,806 ...opella forensis / adducit febris... As an airy Br. Eng. microserf, I should like to say that I seem to be amongst the few who continue to prefer "I/we should", though I admit to using "would" Hope that helps. Abbie More
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