I remember my French teacher in high school illustrating the subjunctive verb structure by telling this little joke:
A teenage girl, in the middle of a screaming argument with her mother, declares, "I hate my life! I wish I was dead!"
Her mother calmly replies, "Oh dear. That's horrible ...
... You should say 'I wish I were dead'. That would be more correct."
H0 h0 ho! (Or as they say in France, 'Haw haw haw!)
Subjunctive sentences are supposed to show a difference between real and hypothetical or wished-for situations (compare the subjunctive sentence 'God save the Queen' with the indicative 'God saves the Queen').
I always thought that the subjunctive, like the preposition rule, was something that the lay idiot mangled in his ultimate quest to corrupt the entire English language. Turns out that I'm the idiot. (Who knew?) The subjunctive, apart from a couple of standard usages like the one above, has been dead and buried for, like, thirty years. No one seems to be mourning it. Unlike most grammar rules, there's no controversy.
Gwen 'If I Was A Rich Girl' Stefani is a better grammarian than me.
... better grammarian than I ...?
... g..gramm ...?
... Aunty Em? Uncle Henry?
Maybe I'll bring it back. While the other kids at the club are partying in their fluoro leggings and slogan tees, I'll be rocking retro grammar cool, wishing the bartender WERE older than me and wishing I WERE dead.
(This is all based on what I learned in class - the internets have a lot more to say on the subject. Maybe there is more controversy than my teacher cares to think.
Of course, it's the internets, so apply salt. People here think Britney Spears is still alive.)
*see what I did here?
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7 comments:
That's what I hate about bartenders. They're beginning to look less and less like they should be legally able to be in the establishment, let alone serving there. Old age is approaching.
Today I saw a bumper sticker that said "I wish I was a V8". It got me thinking about something I read about the use of profane language in Deadwood - apparently in the colonial frontier days, being profane was an acknowledgment that one was now outside civil society, and within the realm of lawlessness.
While profanity and poor grammar are in some ways entirely different things, one might argue that they both serve the same purpose - the guy who put that sticker on his Torana is signaling, consciously or not, to his kin that he is one of them, and to others that he is not. He does not know what a subjunctive is, nor does he want to - this ignorance serves a function in our society.
Likewise, if you meet someone and you ask how they are, and they say "I'm well" rather than "I'm good", that's a signal that you can choose to interpret one way or another. If everyone used perfect grammar, that signal would not be there and it would be harder to judge someone as friend or foe.
Also, it's interesting that in order to reply to this, I had to follow a link that said "1 Comments".
All this grammar chatter makes my head hurt.
Expect lots more grammar chatter. I'm really digging classes and eager to spread the good word.
Piers: How are you today?
Foe: I'm good.
...
Piers: You ain't from around here, are you boy?
Check out comment 1000106 on this link: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/03/catch_of_the_day_the_worst_lyr.html
The whole discussion is pretty funny though.
You brits and your parsing of pop songs. I love it.
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