Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Rapacious Mr. Batstove]

A couple of quick questions. This is out of my middle school grade three textbook, a few sentences feel a little iffy. Are these correct?

What if there were a natural disaster here in Korea?

Q: 'was' and 'were' both feel correct here, which is it?


What if there were no water?

Q: 'were' just feels wrong here, surely 'was' is correct?


Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers

[BuHaoChi]

....

[Woland]

Right - subjunctive for both (but it's a mood, not a tense). (Apologies in advance; I'm in a grammar persnickety mood tonight.)

You may feel used to the indicative form 'was' in these because the subjunctive is increasingly being restricted in many dialects of English and losing the competition with the indicative. Nonetheless, proper use of the subjunctive will be expected of your students on tests, and is still considered in many educated circles one of the markers that distinguishes the educated from the riff-raff. Not that, you, Mr. Batstove, as well dressed as you are in your avatar, are riff-raff.

[procrastinatrix]

agreed w/ the above 2 posts
subjunctive isn't that big a deal in vernacular English...i think you might see a bit more if it in langs like Spanish, Italian
I hate when people say "if i was..." the grammatically correct way is "if I were" but was is starting to sound right to me sometimes..

[jmbran11]

Many textbooks today say that always using "were" in the subjunctive is a suggestion or a past rule, meaning that it isn't uniformly accepted or practiced.

Frankly, unless your students have mastered all of the typical tenses and use them appropriately and correctly, I wouldn't worry about the subjunctive, as many native-speakers get it "wrong" all the time.

[mrsquirrel]

We often use were instead of was after if. This is common in both formal and informal styles. In a formal style were is more common that was, and many people consider it more correct, especially in American English. The grammatical name for this use of were is 'subjunctive'.

[dogshed]

Fiddler On The Roof

If I were a rich man.

[tzechuk]

I was always told to use *were* for hypothetical questions.

[Wangja]

The simple rule "if is followed by the subjunctive" works pretty well.

From a French grammar textbook for English I read: