Around my house when I was a kid, if I *were* to start a sentence with, "If I *was* ... ", I'd draw a stern look and a correction in a hurry from my ex-Latin teacher grandmother. A while back, I asked the head of a high school English department if the subjunctive mood were/was still being taught English grammar courses, and the answer was, "What's the subjunctive mood?" That answered the question! :^)
I know first hand that people whose first language is English struggle with subjunctives in other languages, e.g. Latin. How 'bout some of you who learned English as a second or later language? Do any of the examples here:http://bit.ly/uO9qeI make sense? Do they sound odd? Did anyone tell you about the subjunctive mood of verbs when they were teaching you English?
Living languages change, and life goes on, but I've been startled lately by a bombardment of "if I was ..." utterances and by OCCC "finishing its remodel[ing]." Dropping endings, of course, is the way English became a separate language from German, so missing "-ings" aren't too unexpected. For example I used to go to Carri's "swim meets," not "swimming meetings." On the other hand, changing accepted verb conjugations (dropping subjunctive forms, for instance) in less than one lifetime is pretty unusual, although changes do come relatively quickly in English. Try reading Shakespeare or Chaucer or the anonymously written Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf," if you want to get a sense of how much English has changed over several centuries.
Just for jollies, here's a subjunctive mood reference from a raging reactionary grammarian: http://www.ceafinney.com/subju
Y'all have a good day now, ya hear?
_Eiplog_
My, how things change!
_______, "Beowulf": http://bit.ly/uS4cOw
Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath's Tale": http://bit.ly/uVFUTQ
Shakespeare, "Macbeth": http://bit.ly/viAoRW
For those who acquired post-traumatic stress disorder from their experience of reading these in high school, I apologize for stirring up memories of ancient horrors. --CLO
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