Question time! Need your help!
- 87
- 10
- 2
I came across a journal on a random blog which argues over the below sentences.
I don't see any problems with the original sentence but some say it doesn't sound right... Can you please tell me if the original is wrong? And the reasons why??
Here's the original sentence: The use of English would never have spread around the world, were English a difficult language to learn.
This is the sentence which some say is correct: The use of English would never have spread around the world, had English been a difficult language to learn.
Thanks! :)
I don't see any problems with the original sentence but some say it doesn't sound right... Can you please tell me if the original is wrong? And the reasons why??
Here's the original sentence: The use of English would never have spread around the world, were English a difficult language to learn.
This is the sentence which some say is correct: The use of English would never have spread around the world, had English been a difficult language to learn.
Thanks! :)
This is the sentence which some say is correct: The use of English would never have spread around the world, had English been a difficult language to learn. [Alternatives: "... if English was/were a difficult language...", "... if English had been a difficult language."]
The use of English would never have spread around the world if English was/were a difficult language to learn.
The subjunctive form "were" is used occasionally in contemporary spoken English, but the simple past tense "was" is more common.
The word order "... were English a difficult language" or "... had English been a difficult language" might occur in written US English, but most Americans would not say it that when speaking. I don't know whether or not this word order is more common in spoken UK English.
"The use of English would never have spread around the world, were English a difficult language to learn" is a perfectly correct sentence, in my opinion, but it sounds bookish and somewhat outdated for the reasons I gave above.
As you mention, probably the sentence in question is from a book or something... (Actually, I was confused at first sight... Now you say it's somewhat "outdated" so hopefully I won't see this kind of sentence a lot in my study!)
Just to make sure, do you think this sentence is stranger? Or how does this sound to you?
The use of English would never have spread around the world, if English had been a difficult language to learn.
You would have been run over if that car had been moving a bit faster.
In this sentence, "had been moving" helps to establish that it is the car's speed at the time of the narrowly avoided accident which is being talked about.
I disagree with the sentence about English, by the way. I think English is just as difficult to learn as most languages are, and that it is harder to learn how to read and write it than some other languages because of the extremely irregular spelling of words (Spanish is much easier in this regard). The use of English spread over the world mainly because of the political and economic conditions during the period of time when global communications improved drastically. If the communications technology had been developed a century earlier, it might have been French that spread instead. (French was once the primary language of international diplomacy.)
I totally agree with you. I don't know the full context so I'm not going to judge, but this one sentence is not something I like to hear... (English is easy, so it has spread around the world!? It's so simple minded...)
But now, since English is spoken in so many parts of the planet, we have a variety of it even though we just call it "English." Like, Singaporean speak Singlish, Japanese, including myself, speak Japanglish, etc. I like the idea that we put some spices into the language...
Spanish uses the subjective just as much as the indicative and learning rules for its use is basically worthless because they can always be broken to imply more doubt/certainty.
Japanese has kana and kanji and while i wouldn't necessarily say that the characters are more difficult than learning the english alphabet, there are a lot more characters than letters and so learning them can take a considerable amount of time.
My point is that i think the difficulty in learning language can sometime be highly exaggerated. Nevertheless this is neither here nor there as your advice to the OP was spot on!
I came across a journal on a random blog which argues over the below sentences. sentences below
nit picky (it sounds a little better this way), but you can definitely say it "below sentences"
your English is really good (and id be honest with you if it weren't) your post reads perfectly. that's all haha
As for the question. the original sentence is OK and i have no doubt that people could understand if you said it that way. Native speakers would say the original sentence. However, its meaning may be a little unclear.
As for the correction, i would say that it is just as unclear as the original if not more unclear. however could and would be said by a native speaker. [i think the reason i dont like it is that it has a past tense and so implies that while it did spread around the world at is no longer used currently OR it is no longer an easy language. its just a little off to me]
I would correct the sentence to "(The use of) English would never have spread around the world, if it were such a difficult language to learn."
Note: I wouldn't use "the use of" it is unnecessary but maybe the speaker was trying to add emphasis, but i dont like it. also this is something that most native speakers wont know, but the statement "if it were" is grammatically correct. This type of conditional statement is the only time in English when a subjunctive is used (it is used commonly in Spanish and uncommonly in french). However, "if it was" may sound better (though probably grammatically incorrect)and nobody would question if you said it.
Hmm... So you say using a past tense in the sentence gives you a strange impression? Not a past perfect tense?? (Sorry I guess I didn't get right on that part of your comment...)
The sentence you write to me is very clear to me. Thank you for the other tips too!
"if it were such a difficult language to learn"
or
"if it was such a difficult language to learn."
would come out of a native speaker's mouth. and a native speaker might tell you that both are correct.
however, i believe that in truth only "if it were" is grammatically correct and I'm not sure if/at what level this would be taught to an english learner (as i am a native speaker). The only reason I know that it is subjunctive is because I learned spanish.
in this case "were" is a subjunctive tense for the a singular noun. it has to be used because of the "if" which make the statement a conditional statement.
English is a singular noun. You say "English IS" and "English WAS" only in this conditional situation do you use "English WERE" any other time and it would immediately sound extremely weird/bad to a native speaker.
Just to clarify 1 other point
For a singular noun:
present tense: is
perfect tense: has been
past tense: was
past perfect tense: had been
conditional: were
i hope this helps! i know its a lot of information but i wouldn't worry about it because it is a very specific point and most english speakers wouldn't be able to tell you what is correct.
I was gonna ask you about the parts you said "unclear" in your first comment. Not about the past tense in a conditional statement... (As you told me, at school, we learned that "were" is gramatically correct but "was" is also used by native English speaker. So I have no problem there! But thank you so much for taking time for me!)
You said some meanings of the original sentence was "unclear" right? Can you explain this a bit more please? (Sorry I'm bothering you again...)
I’m sure you already know but when you use a past tense it can imply that something was one way in the past and even though it is not stated, the sentence can imply that it is no longer that way currently.
For example:
He is smart.
OR
He was smart.
The past tense in the sentence “He was smart.” Implies 1 of 2 things. 1)He was smart, and he is currently dead and therefore no longer exists. 2) he was smart at 1 time and now he is no longer smart anymore.
So, back to our sentence. Since English still exists the sentence can be read that while it wasn’t difficult at one time to learn it has changed so that now it is difficult to learn in the present. While I may be looking into the sentence too much, this is a possible meaning to the sentence.
The correct answer that was given on the website AND the conditional answer possibly still has the same problem.
That was what I was referring to when I said it could be unclear.
In some ways the best way to say the sentence would be “Because English IS not a difficult language to learn, its spread was facilitated around the world.”
Of course this is changing more than just the tenses of the words.
Also facilitated sounds a little weird but I even looked for a better word but couldn’t decide on 1… language isn’t perfect.
All in all im probably looking too far into the sentence now which is why I didn’t expand on it originally
Actually, I've never given it a thought... but yeah, you're right. Now I wonder why we use a past tense in the context...
In Japanese, we use a past tense too in a conditional statement... We can also use a present tense but seems it gives me a bit different impression. Hmm...
Anyway, it seems like we have to study linguistics to fully understand those interesting rules...