Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mosley]

"These days, a lot of people seem to have complaints and dissatisfaction, whether they be big or small." This is from a second year HS text. Apparently, some students think(because of the structure) that a modal like "should" is needed after "they". The point of contention is that "be" isn't conjugated to "are". A Kteacher asked me about this and I think I did a p*ss poor job of explaining why the most basic of verbs need not be changed(at least not to me). Any ideas/thoughts?

[faster]

I believe it is a conditional (subjunctive), like we use with order/suggestion words:

The coach required that he shave his sideburns.




Reminds me of a little recursive statement, I think from Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas:

If there was no subjunctive in English, this sentence would be grammatically correct

[robot]

It's subjunctive.

Easiest to just tell your students no, should won't work here, cuz it's a collocation [whether (sth) be...].

It's used when talking about more than one possibility.

Unless they're pretty advanced, it likely won't be too useful for them to know, as [whether + be] is of a more formal register and also kinda archaic, like a lot of other subjunctive constructions.

[Mosley]

Thanks guys. Yeah, I never even thought of the subjunctive angle. I daresay, with the subjunctive becoming "archaic", the usage is unnecessarily abstruse for 16 year old Korean kids!