By Dialects, Subjunctives

There's some truth in that article. My parents, for instance, used to speak in Sardinian (not a dialect, but recognised as an endangered language by the UNESCO) when talking to each other or to their relatives, but they would only speak Italian with my brother and me. I grew up monolingual,...

Oh my, I'm so surprised! I would never have thought you said it yourself! By the way, you said "If I'd have known", and not "If I'd known" (which can't mean "If I would have known", because you would be leaving out a syllable...).Anyway, I'll tell...

Your American colleagues must all speak the same dialect, but the dialect they speak is apparently not the same as mine. What part of the US are your colleagues from?- The doctor recommended (that) he lose weight. (lose = subjunctive)- The doctor recommended losing weight.- The doctor...

I would just say the difference is:If it was... (but it's not)If it had been... (but it was not)So it depends on the context and what you want to say... or how you want to say it.Some people use the past instead of the subjunctive, like in "If I knew you were coming, I would have baked...

We have a rule, let's call it Rule W:if clauses—the traditional rules. According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact: if I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. The verb in the main...

In my dialect, it's always "were". Anytime there's an "If I" + the verb "to be" it's gonna be "were" no matter what follows. I heard that usage was dying out in British English? Is that true? To me, "If I was" sounds quite incorrect.

No, I'm not a teacher.As I've said before, I know that traditional grammar calls it the subjunctive. My point is that the distribution of the "if I were" form is very different from the "I demand that it be done" form. It makes sense, from a linguistic point of view, to give them different names....

Julielai wrote: Just out of curiosity, Mr. P, how do you distinguish a native speaker who's learned a non-standard form of English from a decent non-native speaker? (e.g. How can you tell if a speaker born in India, Singapore or other Asian countries is native?) Hello Julie I'm not sure I...

1. She phoned to ascertain whether he were dining at the club. 2. He looked at me as if he suspected I were cheating on him. 3. If he were surprised, he didn't show it. Only my opinion; but I would call these three examples incorrect in standard English. (Some rural BrE dialects use "were"...

MrPedantic wrote: Hello Jussive I would say that the subjunctive is incorrect after in this instance, since "whether" presents one option of two: 1. She phoned to ascertain whether he was dining at the club (or not). MrP Well, I would have thought that the simple fact that she called to...