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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Clarke who wrote (873)	2/2/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: Sowbug	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4710

Ex: Si j'avais de l'argent, j'acheterais quelque chose. That's something I've never been able to reconcile -- why must we say "If I were you" (which must be a subjunctive tense because the past tense is "was," and also because you say so in post #869) but no Spanish/French construction uses the subjunctive? Si tengo, comprare. Si tenia, compraria. Si hube tenido, habria comprado. Si j'ai, j'acheterai. Si j'avais, j'acheterais. Si j'avais eu, j'aurais achete. Laisse-moi seul. (I'm only about 60% sure about the Spanish. It's been a while.) In more modern French, they use the imperfect for the "if" clause and the conditional for the dependent clause. They never use the subjunctive along with "if". I'll infer from that that the subjunctive in these constructions has simply evolved away in French, and probably in Spanish, too. I don't like the English constructions because if I say "If I were" then my brain also wants to say "If I be," which ought to be the present subjunctive, and I know I've seen that written in poems, but I'd be locked up if I started talking like that. I have no problem with evolving language and extinct constructions, but why can't we be consistent?