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The Subjunctive Mood
English is a mishmash of several languages, and it's losing pieces of itself all the time the way the Ross Ice Shelf loses ice. This results in a lot of quirks. One is the almost-but-not-quite-gone subjunctive mood. The WHAT? In many languages, especially old ones like Latin, there's a special form of verbs to indicate things that might happen, or didn't happen but could have, or should have happened, or you wish they'd happened, or... to put it simply, possibilities, alternate realities. That special form is the subjunctive. (Ancient Greek is even more nitpicky: it uses subjunctive for some of those, and a third form, the optative, for others. These forms give students nightmares, because for every one of them, they have to memorize huge tables of extra verb endings). Have I lost you? Sorry. Anyway, the point is, English used to have subjunctive too: a special way of changing verbs to show things that might, or should've, or didn't actually happen. The subjunctive has nearly vanished. Instead we use little helping words like might, ought, should, etc. to do the same job. However, I know of one place where the subjunctive hasn't quite vanished. Few people know of it, and in another generation or two it could drop out of grammar books. I like it, because it's like the shutter-click sound on digital cameras to let you know a picture's been taken, even though most cameras don't have shutters anymore. Look at this: I was raised in a poor family, but if I were rich...
If he were more responsible...
Were? What's that doing there? It's one of the last few subjunctives left in the English language. When you're describing a possibility that could have but did not happen, you're speaking in the subjunctive. In that case, the normal past-tense form of "to be" turns into "were." It's used with all subjects -- he, she, it, we, you, John, the gerbil, etc. There's another subjunctive lurking around too, but we tend to do this one automatically, whereas the past subjunctive has nearly gone the way of cassette tapes. I demand that she leave the room this instant!
She leaves the room.
So help me God.
The Lord helps those who help themselves. What's with the disappearing s? Normally, third person singular subjects -- he, she, it, George, the pretzel -- add an s to the end of the verb. The world turns, the dog barks. In the subjunctive present tense, the verb drops all additions and reverts back to its dictionary entry. These examples demonstrate a second use of the subjunctive: things the speaker wishes to happen. Good copy editors and proofreaders will fix your subjunctives for you, but you will sound more polished and professional if you know when to use them.
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Contributor's Note
Check out the link below for "The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes" and other persnickety grammar tips!
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American Heritage® Book of English Usage: The Subjunctive
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Good to see that you didn't leave out the Optative of Wish or the Subjunctive of Desire. Greek my be nitpicky but it is a beautifully structured language. Thanks for this interesting intel.
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