The Subjunctive: a Mini-Rant

My grammar pet peeve is when people do not use the subjunctive mood (or use it incorrectly) in conditional statements beginning with ‘if’ to express wishes or hypotheses. That’s a lot harder to say than something like ‘ATM machine’, but that’s how it is. A most memorable example is from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End trailer at about the 2:10 mark. “If I wasn’t…this’d probably never work”. Really Johnny Depp, it wouldn’t work? You know what doesn’t work? The brain of the scriptwriter who gave you that line. And yes, I understand that Captain Jack Sparrow is a pirate and he never went to grammar school but just listening to it again to make sure I have the right link makes me wince. It should be ‘were’. However, a quick and very unscientific poll of my hall-friends illustrates how most people learn about the subjunctive: through foreign languages or not at all. My friends who only took a few years of a foreign language, or none at all, have without fail never even heard of the subjunctive mood. And this would perhaps explain why this type of mistake is made with a frequency that has led almost to the creation of a nervous tic in my left eye.

As a Latin student for far too many years, I’d have to say that my experiences mimic those of my friends. I can tell you all about the subjunctive in Latin, there are about a bajillion different forms and a handy phrase —we beat a liar— to help you remember the correct suffix in present tense. Yet many of the situations where the subjunctive is used in Latin, such as the volative subjunctive, do not translate into English. Still worse, many subjunctives in English, such as the optative subjunctive, have been translated quite differently, even while being considered the same entity by multilingual grammarians. For example, English uses auxiliaries ‘let’ and ‘may’ (e.g. let there be light, may it be etc.) instead of changing the mood of the main verb as occurs in some Germanic languages. Keep in mind that English is considered a pretty even split between Romance and Germanic language derivative, though purists know the favor is tilted towards the Germanic roots.

An even worse quirk, that the optative subjunctive used to be an entirely different mood in some languages, is largely ignored in this post for the sake of what is left of my sanity. Yet worst of all is the fact that many English teachers never even bother teaching the subjunctive mood; it is considered something students will pick up naturally as those around them use it correctly. That would be great… if the people around them used it correctly, but if Hollywood can’t do it there’s little hope for future generations. I’ll be wincing all the way into dentures and rheumatism.

Anyway, there was a point to all this. I am typically from the ‘you only need to use enough grammar to get your meaning across’ school of grammar-thought but the entire point of pet peeves is that they aggravate us more than is normally deemed appropriate. As a high school English teacher I probably will not teach my students about the subjunctive, I will not start a grassroots campaign to see the subjunctive reinstated to its former glory (Middle and Old English used it quite a bit more). It is a pointless fight, but still I stuffer. So if you see me wince when someone says “if I was…” please nod understandingly and move on or better yet, frown disapprovingly in the direction of the offender. The world will be a better place for it.