I don’t see how this is different from suggesting that the dual number or the ablative case no longer “exist” in American English.

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.

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?

;-)

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.

I’m pretty poor at grammar but “If I would have …” — isn’t this called auxiliary verbs/verb phrases? Or modal verbs even?