Re: English Subjunctive

Quoting Joe <joe@...>:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 9:20 AM
> Subject: Re: English Subjunctive
>
>
> > Quoting Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>:
> >
> > > Not that we can tell, anyway! It [the subjunctive] is identical to
> > > the indicative apart from the 3s present and the
> > > past of be.
> >
> > I thought the present subjunctive of "to be" was "be" across the board?
>
> Aye, 'tis.  Of course, 's not really the case anymore.  These days we insist
> on using those annoying words like 'if' and 'whether' with the indicative.
>
> English doesn't really have a seperately inflected subjunctive in normal
> speech.
That's too bad, isn't it. My solution - make German courses obligatory.
Learning German has noticeably increased my use of the subjunctive/conjunctive
in Swedish. (For many speakers, the Swedish subjunctive is pretty dead, or only
occurs in the fom _vore_, past subjunctive of _att vara_ "to be".)

                                                                 Andreas

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