Timeline for I'd be honored if it was/were you
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 20, 2013 at 18:24 | comment | added | Animadversor | Thanks very much. That's what I wanted to verify, that a speaker of British English would understand all three to mean the same thing. | |
| Apr 20, 2013 at 12:01 | comment | added | David | Animadversor, while I agree the subjunctive should be used where appropriate, it is not always so used in England, and all three phrases you just mentioned strike me as likely to be interpreted as having the same meaning. | |
| Apr 20, 2013 at 0:59 | comment | added | Animadversor | Don't speakers of British English say things such as I insist that she comes meaning the same thing as I insist that she should come? This is what I remember hearing and reading. While the second example would be understood by Americans as equivalent to I insist that she come, the first would not. | |
| Apr 20, 2013 at 0:36 | comment | added | David | Well, I agree that there is a difference between those two sentences. As "insists that he be" sounds artificial or prissy to English ears nowadays, you will often find a "should" in there now: "she insists that he should be present", although on the basis of sequence of tenses this is suboptimal. There are more than 11m instances of "insists that he should be" on Google. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 23:01 | comment | added | Animadversor | Very true. The use of the indicative in British English where we Americans would use the subjunctive can sound quite odd to our ears and can even lead to misunderstanding. For example, She insists that he is present means to us something quite different than She insists that he be present. Even when there is not a risk of confusion, it still sounds "off" to us. | |
| Apr 19, 2013 at 21:35 | history | answered | David | CC BY-SA 3.0 |