Hi. Question.
I had a Japanese English teacher ask me a question today. I had a hard time giving him the reason why. Mostly because I don't know the reason.
He asked me why we can say 'I wish I could do that.' but not 'I wish I would do that.'
I told him that if you change the subject then he could use would. For example 'I wish my father would do that.'
Any help in explaining the reason/s to me would be greatly appreciated.
Michael
Wish I could and wish I would
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I reckon it's to do with certain aspects of the meaning of each modal in at least the given examples: will here is about "volition" say (or indeed 'will' in a noun sense), and most people have self-volition and don't need to wish otherwise, hence the oddity of I wish I would do that (but how about I wish I wouldn't give conflicting counter-examples quite so often (NB: I wish I could stop giving conflicting counter-examples; ??/*I wish I couldn't give conflicting counter-examples)); could on the other hand relates to (in)ability, or some sort of (im)possibility in the circumstances, which the speaker obviously has much less control over (or will need to work to change, which could take a while) than his or her relatively simple and straightforward own volition.