Were I to seek examples of the subjunctive…
…I might begin with the excellent Wikipedia article on the issue, which provides a nice introduction to its usage in English and other Indo-European languages.
I’m a native English speaker, but the first language I studied was Spanish, which I think accounts for my fascination with the subjunctive mood. It’s much more commonly heard in Spanish, partly because its usage in English disappears amid polysemy:
→ I wish you were nicer to your brother. (past subjunctive)
→ You were lucky he didn’t hit you. (past indicative)
Different words, but you wouldn’t know it. The only time you notice the subjunctive in English is when the verb doesn’t seem to match the subject:
→ If I were rich, I’d have you killed. (contrafactual)
→ I request that he be given exile. (indirect command)
→ Let us fight our enemies, not each other. (hortatory)
When the subjunctive shows up, there’s almost always drama. Someone is expressing hope or doubt. It’s worth paying attention.
Cynics have been predicting the death of the subjunctive for years, arguing that it is mostly confined to archaic phrases. I disagree. While there are many shaky grammatical constructs I could easily see collapsing (who/whom, lay/lie), I think the subjunctive has several points in its favor:
Most native speakers don’t know they’re using it. While we notice when it’s omitted (”If I was president…”), the majority of people get it right without knowing why. (”I demand my account be reactivated immediately.”)
While there are alternatives, they’re rarely better. The previous example could be rewritten, “I demand you reactivate my account…” or “Reactivate my account, you idiot!” But neither achieves the same effect as the subjunctive. English thrives on having many ways of saying similar-but-different things.
It’s really common in religious material. The U.S. is very church-y, so Americans get a weekly dosage of subjunctive in their sermons and prayers. (”The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”)
Remember that the subjunctive is invoked by the semantics, not just the words leading up to it:
→ If I were correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.
but…
→ If I was correct in my calculations, we should hear a boom in three seconds.
Now that I’ve expressed my deep affection for the subjunctive, let me urge discretion when using it in screenwriting. Many times, your characters will speak ungrammatically. Your knowledge of the subjunctive should never trump their ignorance.
- PAPPY
- If was a bettin’ man, I’d say he demanded Sonny kills that other fella lest he rats him out to Bubba.
That’s three missed opportunities to use the subjunctive, but it may be the right choice for Pappy. Always go by ear with dialogue.
49 Responses to “Were I to seek examples of the subjunctive…”
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April 16th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Thanks for this article, John. It’s been quite helpful for me as a non-native speaker of the English language. I’ve always been wondering why there’s an “I were” although it has to be “I was” - we never did that in school as I remember. But yes, it’s more frequently in Spanish and we learned it when we talked about the “Subjuntivo”. It’s really odd to know that hopes and wishes do have their own grammar, indeed.
And as for
I found out that this is another problem I’m facing each time I write an English screenplay. First of all I have to say that I rather stick to American English than the good old Oxford. I think that American English is easier to deal with and since I’d like to sell my screenplays to the big ones one day, hehe, and my stories mostly take place in America, I think it’s okay. But as a non-native speaker I always find myself sticking too much to grammer and fearing that I might be misunderstood or that people who read my script think I don’t know the(ir) language. But that’s not how real people talk… I mean everyday chit-chat does not need no strict grammar - characters will speak ungrammatically!
What I try to do is to watch as much DVDs as possible to get a feeling for the “real” language since I (unfortunately) don’t have the opportunity to simply book a ticket and spend some time in the US. But if there’s anything else I can do, I’m very pleased for every advice I can get.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:44 am
As much as I’d like to think I’m a grammar snob, stuff like this always humbles me. I find it fascinating, probably the way Civil War buffs stare at the same dusty old uniforms every weekend, recounting the days even though they weren’t there to experience them. If you like the intriguing world of grammar, here’s a couple sites to enjoy:
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-subjunctive.htm
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive.aspx
April 16th, 2008 at 7:05 am
This post hit close to home for two reasons: One, I’m a foreign language teacher by training, and I find it immensely fascinating that students usually use the subjunctive correctly most of the time in English but consider it an utter nightmare in another language. I get to have an awful lot of “fun” finding and introducing examples of correct subjunctive usage in popular culture to show when the subjunctive should be used.
Second, that statement contrary to fact about Jeopardy! is unfortunately very true for me.
And on a final note, I’d be remiss if I didn’t fix the opening sentence of your final paragraph: You actually watch as many DVDs as possible, not as much. Many is used when describing something that can be counted; much is for something that can’t be counted.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:51 am
You said:
“Most native speakers don’t know they’re using it. While we notice when it’s omitted (”If I was president…”), the majority of people get it right without knowing why. (”I demand my account be reactivated immediately.””
I think that’s true for most grammatical constructions. Americans are notoriously ignorant of grammar until they have to learn a second language, and then they start learning the grammar of English very quickly. Screenwriters often confuse the progressive verb tense with the passive voice, etc. Very frustrating for a linguist to watch.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Thanks Luke, you’re right
April 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Are you saying that we’d all notice that “If I was president…” didn’t sound right?
Becuase I think it sounds fine and am not convinced that it’s in any way incorrect. Just another way to phrase it.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:09 am
John, you just became my personal hero for the day.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Wonderful, John! We just went over “le subjonctif” in my college French class the other day. It was quite confusing, I might say, though reading how it’s used in English really helps. Thank you, sir.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Okay, I gotta ask….
…why?
I mean, I love the subjunctive as much as the next guy, but…?
Anyway, I long for the days when “were” was used more liberally. The Salem Witch trial days. “It were a goodly horse he rode.” Yeah. Now that’s talkin’.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
“Are you saying that we’d all notice that “If I was president…” didn’t sound right? Becuase I think it sounds fine and am not convinced that it’s in any way incorrect.”
That’s exactly what he’s saying, because it’s objectively, inarguably incorrect grammatically and, to my ears, sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Thanks, John! You made my day.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Nice little article, but I’d like to point out that none of the above three examples use the subjunctive mood for subject-case verbs. In the first example, “If I were rich” is an adverbial clause modifying “have you killed.” The subject is “I,” and its verb phrase is “would have.”
In the second example, “he” functions as an indirect object of sorts (in a passive-voice context), not as the subject.
Finally, in the third example, the subject is a sort of “virtual subject” that is not represented by a word in the sentence. This “virtual subject” receives the “let” command. “us fight our enemies, not each other” is what the subject should let happen.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I notice that past subjunctive often is paired with another clause, which IIRC is called past potential. For example, the second clause in your example.
“If I were correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.”
However, I think that should be
“If I was correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.”
I will leave that question for better grammarians than I.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
An interesting contrast (at least in Koine Greek) is comparing the Subjunctive mood to the Optative.
Both are typically translated in English as “you may ___” or ” you might __” (for the second person, of course). The core difference is that the Subjunctive is with a sense of high probability or even certainty; while the Optative, though translated pretty much the same, has much greater uncertainty.
I confess I haven’t studied many other languages to that level. Do other modern languages have an Optative mood?
April 16th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
It’s also worth mentioning that we frequently misuse the subjunctive in English or should I say fail to use it.
In Texas, we have ads running on the radio with the governor’s wife saying: “If there was an emergency and your family was separated…”
April 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
“I wish you were nicer to your brother” is not past subjunctive. It is present subjunctive.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
@Charles: I think “If I had been correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy” is better.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Nathan said: “[the phrasing "If I was president" is] objectively, inarguably incorrect grammatically”
How wrong you are! The subjunctive mood is simply missing from many dialects of modern English.
It’s also fine to put prepositions at the end of a sentence, and English does not have grammatical gender, et cetera, et cetera.
You will find, by the way, that “inarguably incorrect grammatically” is inarguably grammatically incorrect - unless you meant it as a sort of topicalisation, in which case it would be written and pronounced “inarguably incorrect, grammatically”.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
@Magritte (#6):
Here’s an example of how “If I was president” could be used correctly:
→ The crash of Air Force One has left me with amnesia. I have no idea what my former job was. If I was pilot, I suppose I did a bad job flying the plane. If I was president, I hope the country does well in my absence.
In pretty much any other case, it should be, “If I were president….”
I’m not a prescriptivist. If you want to say it the other way, knock yourself out. But common usage still favors the subjunctive, and I think it will persist, for reasons outlined above.
@Craig (#9):
This from the guy who can go for 20 paragraphs about work-for-hire.
@Brian (#11):
We can bump it up a level if you want, but here’s the short version: don’t confuse the subject of the sentence with the subject of the clause. In each case, the clause has a subject and verb. That’s the agreement we’re talking about.
You’ll notice the subjunctive is almost always found in sentences with indicative verbs. It’s clause-ophilic.
@Charles Eicher (#12):
I think the better grammarians will disagree. It’s a contrafactual condition. Here’s another fun thing you can do with the subjunctive: Try flipping subject and verb. If it makes sense, that’s a subjunctive situation.
→ Were I correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.
@Tim Archer (#14):
What’s interesting is that mis-speakers use the past tense, somehow sensing that they can’t use the present tense, though it would make a lot more sense.
→ If there is an emergency and your family is separated…
Nothing objectionable about that.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
@Surajit (#15):
Present subjunctive is “you be,” while past subjunctive is “you were.”
You’re not the only one who finds it confusing. From the article…
April 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Did Joss Whedon put you up to this?
April 16th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Some nits to pick:
Lie/lay is is not a point of grammar, but rather a point of semantics. If they actually do merge, it will won’t be a big thing at all. Semantic matters shift all the time.
You confuse the subjective and the past tense combined with the passive voice.
Niklas is correct, you mistake different equally valid — even if lower status — dialects for incorrect grammar.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
for Ed Eubanks: in modern languages I know (French, Italian, Portuguese) there’s not optative.
It’s assimilated in conditional mood.
I remember of optative in Old Greek. Latin already lost the optative mood, substituted by subjunctive. So I guess all the languages descending from Latin lost it.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Great post! But I’m not sure of your third example. Isn’t this a modal auxiliary and infinitive in English taking the place of a (Latin or Greek) subjunctive? We do have a problem in English that derived from subjugating our grammar to a Latinate grammar, different though they be (!) in both origin and practice.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
“if i’d a knowed you’da want to went, i woulda got to get to go…”
April 16th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
@ John: Fair enough. And apologies for not really making a contribution. Bored at work and all, and came through Gruber. Not an excuse, just a reason
Good discussion here, though.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Great post. But shouldn’t that last example be:
Had I been correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.
“Were I correct” makes it present subjunctive, no?
April 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@Steven (#26):
Had I been… is pluperfect subjunctive, and reads a little better, I’ll grant you. I was searching for a parallel construction that could show examples of “If I were…” and “If I was…”
I liked Everything Bad quite a bit, BTW.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
No no! Shouldn’t it really read:
“If I were correct with my question, I would have won Jeopardy.”
April 16th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Oh, that’s really interesting. I never noticed that I used it nearly never in English. In German, however, the subjunctive is used frequently, especially by kids expressing their imagination. My kids, for example, use it when they’re imagining that they’d be something else, like a police man or robber, and they build complete conversations only using subjunctive — something that sounds grammatically complicated even to an adult. Amazing.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I’m pretty sure all this is Greek. And, I doth wonder, I am not a writer because none of this makes the least bit of sense to me? Does this limit my chance of ever selling a screenplay? Will a studio executive ever give me notes proclaiming by superjunctivitous is past-participle imperfect? If I were sitting in a room of writers on a television series, will the latest pitch go to the one who can articulate whatever the hell is up for discussion here? I feel so inferior, kinda like when the nerd beats the jocks ass in a math equation. Damn, I never fit in with the jocks, and now, I’ll never be one with the nerds…
I must discover a way not to loathe my lack of educated self… sheesh, one more thing to explain to my shrink… my education failed me so poorly, not only do I stare at blank pages all day waiting for black ink to fill them… the lovely words I would have chosen, I am now sure I have no idea what form of grammatical definitions they belong to.
I am sure this punishment for taking LSD and going to school that day, or I am eternally stuck in a Woody Allen nightmare.
All in favor… say “eye” or is that “aye”… or maybe “I”… and how many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop…
Alas, the world may never know…
“I”
April 16th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
See now… This is the style in which I attempt to write most of my fiction. I pick it up, haphazard, through the classics via osmosis. It reeks of fairytale and reminds me of my grandfather, who received a classical education, and told awesome stories.
I am most annoyed that I don’t understand what you’re all talking about… and have just spent hours reading about the subjunctive — only to find myself all the more confused! But at least I know it’s mystical name now… and I shall spend many more hours reading about it. I’m quite excited! If I were any more of a geek…
Great post, John. Writing is such a beautiful craft. Just to know that hundreds (thousands?) of people will read this blog post makes me feel better, somehow. I can’t even express how disheartening I find it to not hear people talk this way any more.
Let us learn! Lest we forget the way in which fireside stories ought be told. Also, let there be coco.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:44 am
“I demand you reactivate my account…” is still subjunctive, isn’t it?
You would notice it in the third person singular:
“I demand (that) he reactivate my account…”
April 17th, 2008 at 2:10 am
@John August(#18)
A couple of points:
Firstly, I’m not 100% sure what you mean by “common usage”, and I’m also not sure whether the situation is different in America, but here in the UK, in informal speech and writing “if I was” is definitely used more than “if I were”.
I notice this every time, because before I started reading a little bit about linguistics, I was decidedly prescriptivist, and this was one of my biggest pet peeves.
Secondly, it seems that (some?) linguists would argue that “if I were” isn’t actually the subjunctive at all:
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001192.html
April 17th, 2008 at 2:56 am
If I were able to understand this, I would post a sensible comment. However, I weren’t.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Regarding this example: “I demand my account be reactivated immediately.”
You say: “While there are alternatives, they’re rarely better. The previous example could be rewritten, ‘I demand you reactivate my account…””
I think you’ve still got a subjunctive–active rather than passive. No?
April 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I’m not a native english speaker, yet I’ve always prided myself in having a decent ammount of knowledge about it. Until I read this. By seeing the subjunctive analyzed as it was here, I realize it’s a really complex subject.
Can anyone use it in a spanish sentence so that I can get a better grasp of it?
Great post.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Interesting to imagine a world where subjunctive expressions were taboo and offensive, a sort of Jonathan Lethemy idea such as the censure of all conversational questions in his novel Gun With Occasional Music. Or if people who used it were considered nuts:
“If I were president I’d consider it a sound fiscal policy to reduce our ballooning deficit.”
“Ah jeez call the nut-house Bob’s lost it.”
Or if people still had a fantasy life but everyone used the indicative, making fantasy statements indistinguishable from reality in conversation and writing:
“Fellas I’m the president and I’m gonna reduce the deficit.”
“Well now Bob let’s be clear ’bout this are you the chief executive o’this fine country or is this one o’your fantastical bar-room rants we so oft encounter?”
Maybe we’d need some small physical gesture to indicate fantasy. We could bend the left leg at the knee, wave a small blue flag, or perhaps do jumping jacks.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:13 am
The past form “was” still captures the counterfactual intention just as good as “were”.
present possible condition: If I am
past possible condition: If I was
present counterfactual condition: if I were/was
past counterfactual condition: if I had been
Writers have been using “if I was” and “if I were” in counterfactual clauses interchangeably for about 300 years. Some usage books acknowledge that either one is standard English.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:19 am
The subjunctive mood in English has always been a bit of a mystery to me and now I know why: Its usage varies so greatly. A lot of native English speakers (perhaps most) never give indication of the subjunctive mood and get by just fine. It’s really confusing for the non-native English speaker.
The subjunctive mood is very common in Icelandic usage and you can always identify it by the verb-form used (if you don’t use the right verb-form the sentence makes little sense, it’s as simple as that). So it’s easy to learn to spot this mood.
A lot of people, especially kids, have a tendency to avoid using the specific subjunctive mood verb-forms; instead they rely on modal verbs (i.e. the indicative mood plus modal verbs) to do the job.
This is a big style-issue.
If a character in your screenplay, say, uses modal verbs all the time (to construct the subjunctive mood) he or she will end up sounding kind of immature/undereducated. The repetitive modal verb use gets really tiresome, bordering on sleep-inducing, and the dialogue sounds flabby.
The better educated people are the more likely they are to use the specific s-m verb-forms (that’s what style manuals exhort people to do — they figure that because the Saga-writers shunned modal verbs you should too).
This definitely makes for brisker and better dialogue.
But a character who unfailingly uses the ‘proper’ s-m verb-form will end up sounding like an intellectual, and a really stuffy one at that. This particularly applies if he or she is given to using rare-ish irregular verbs, then you get verb-forms that are just too unfamiliar to a lot of people. Or simply sound too funny or strange.
Some verbs lend themselves better to the subjunctive mood than others.
So you’ve got to strike a balance, somehow, to preserve the illusion of real speech.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Have you noticed the increasing frequency of garbling the subjunctive like this: “If I would have remembered my keys I would not be locked out” when the speaker means “Had I remembered my keys I would…”? This grating confusion seems to be leaking into print more often, or I’m just sensitized to it.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:28 am
@Lee:
I’m pretty poor at grammar but “If I would have …” — isn’t this called auxiliary verbs/verb phrases? Or modal verbs even?
April 17th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Wow, John– Not only are you an amazing screenwriting resource, but now you’re inadvertently helping me review for my Spanish teaching certification test? What a guy! Is there no end to the magical fountain of knowledge at http://www.johnaugust.com?
April 17th, 2008 at 9:22 am
@Wes (#28):
To split an even finer hair, the instructions for Jeopardy are that, “You must state your answer in the form of a question.” So it’s still an answer, even though it’s a question.
That’s a koan for ya.
@Andras (#32):
You’re right: that’s definitely still the subjunctive, and a good example of how embedded it is English.
@Rich Cheng (#33) and Goofy (#38):
The polysemy in English (we use the same word many forms of a verb) makes it hard to say definitively whether a certain case or mood is being used — in a given example, or overall by speakers of a language.
Here’s what I’d argue: Even if someone is saying, “If I was president…” they’re still using a special rule, because that “was” is not a past tense “was.” They’re hypothesizing about a non-existent state. It makes sense to call that the subjunctive, because that’s the term we use across languages for these contrafactual conditions.
So we’re not really disagreeing. Some people use “was” instead of “were.” While that may grate on some ears, it’s still a grammatically significant distinction from the indicative.
@Pedro (#36):
Espero que no estuviera con Manuel.
Ojalá que tengas suerte.
Te recomiendo que no hables con guionistas.
@Lee (#40):
What I think you’re hearing is parallel construction (would-would), which sometimes feels easier when forming it on the fly. But “Had I…” does sound better.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
The British commonly avoid the subjunctive altogether. Perhaps we should in the USA as well, since it is not taught nor well understood by Americans.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I have written a bunch of scripts without paying any attention to this kind of thing. Should I consider myself an inferior writer now?
or
Were I to have written a bunch of scripts without paying attention to this kind of thing, should I consider myself now an inferior writer?
or
Having written a bunch of scripts without any attention paid to this kind of thing, I consider myself an inferior writer now.
Subjective or not, its depressing.
I mean subjunctive. Or do I?
April 17th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
@Dharbigt (#44):
I don’t know if you read through all of the comments, but I highly doubt the British “avoid the subjunctive altogether.” Rather, you’re noticing that they’re not using the forms you would expect in places where the difference is noticeable (if I were…). But they’re still using it a lot in all of its invisible incarnations.
If you can point me to a study showing that the British are actually using the indicative in place of the subjunctive, I’d be fascinated to be proved wrong.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Did you study any Linguistics in college by any chance, John?
April 17th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I’m from England though living in the U.S. and the subjunctive was alive and well last time I was there so I’m curious to hear examples of its absence.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
So be it.