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I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it were already named Lingua Mathematica, and I submit that as the best reason to give it that name (and not some other).

Based on my understanding, I think this is correct, but it sounds worse than common uses of the subjunctive I'm already familiar with (e.g. “if I were an Oscar Meyer weiner…”). Is it correct?

Note: I'm interested in prescriptivist English grammar here, not meaningless practicalities like being understood by people. There's no need to remind me that I'll be well understood only by saying “to learn it was.”

I am more confident of “I would not have been surprised if I were to learn it is already named Lingua Mathematica…” and not quite as much more confident in “I would not have been surprised were I to learn it is already named Lingua Mathematica…” which sounds extra hoity-toity.

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    I do not understand the votes to close as Not A Real Question. It's a concrete utterance, and OP aks Is it correct or not--and, implicitly, Why? What's ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical about it? Why can it not be reasonably answered in its current form? Barrie England has answered it quite reasonably.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 17:08
  • Although there is a clear-cut correct answer here, whose prescriptivist English grammar do you have in mind? There's no single authority, and authorities aren't always in agreement.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 16:38
  • @EdwinAshworth If you are in possession of conflicting opinions from different authorities and want to contribute, I would happily upvote an answer with that information. Lacking that, I don't understand why you think it would be useful to try and stir up controversy about the validity of my inquiry with meaningless hypothetical scenarios when my question was asked and answered satisfactorily seven years ago.
    – Daniel Lyons
    Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 16:58
  • Someone reading your question (I've just come across it) may be misled, upon reading it, into thinking that prescriptivism is considered the correct approach to grammar. And that there is 'a right answer' to every question. '[M]eaningless practicalities like being understood by people' is, quite frankly, a joke and shouldn't appear on a site devoted to English usage.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 18:35
  • @EdwinAshworth You're making a big deal out of a fairly small and obvious joke, on an old and unimportant question. You're better than this.
    – Daniel Lyons
    Commented Apr 23, 2020 at 5:19

2 Answers 2

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The problem arises with the use of ‘to learn’. There is no difficulty with ‘surprised if it were already named . . .’ That’s because irrealis were is used to express unreal meaning. By introducing the clause with if, the writer envisages a situation in which it might be named Lingua Mathematica, when actually it isn’t.

In the sentence as drafted, however, what is it that the writer would have been surprised to learn? It is the fact that it bore the name Lingua Mathematica. The writer’s surprise is hypothesized on the assumption that it is so called, and that makes were inappropriate.

(In describing the modal use of were as 'irrealis were', rather than subjunctive, I have followed the practice of ‘The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language’.)

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    + Very economical. You might also address the confusion of tenses in the examples in OP's final paragraph, where his confidence is misplaced.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 17:12
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    Oh, yes. I would not have been surprised needs to be followed by if I had learnt. There is no hoity-toity version, but a possible alternative is I would not have been surprised to have learnt.
    – Barrie England
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 17:20
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Beyond being "well understood" by the common speaker, you would almost be more correct were you to say "I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it was already named Lingua Mathematica..." That is to say, you wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it was already referred to as Lingua Mathematica.

You would use the subjunctive in that case only if you were drawing up some matter of circumstance. The fact of the matter is that you are not speculating or supposing that something were named Lingua Mathematica; you seem to suppose that you know it as a fact.

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  • On the contrary. I know factually that this thing has no name at all, and this is one of many proposed names. What I'm trying to convey is the sense that if this name had been chosen in the past, it wouldn't be surprising to anyone today.
    – Daniel Lyons
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 6:01
  • So, what you're trying to say is something like this: "Were it not named that way by others in the past, you wouldn't be surprised."
    – J.T. Gralka
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 6:09
  • This blog post by Annete Lyon gives an excellent explanation of the subjunctive mood. You might find it helpful.
    – J.T. Gralka
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 6:12
  • You have an extra not. "Were it named that way by others in the past, I wouldn't be surprised." "It" has not been named yet.
    – Daniel Lyons
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 7:00

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