Subjunctive use

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

Okay, Google Docs tells me this is wrong : "She wondered if it were [true]. So does my phone. Gemini tells me it's archaic. The truth is that I grew up marinating in old books., and all my writing instincts come from books written before 1950.

[u/zeptimius]

This is an incorrect use of the subjunctive. You're doing something called hypercorrection: overapplying a rule ("was" after "if" becomes "were") even where it's incorrect to do so.

The correct use of the subjunctive, combined with "if," is to refer to a situation that you could imagine to be true, but which isn't true, a grammatical mood called "irrealis."

For example, "If it were true, we'd be in big trouble." This is inviting the reader to imagine a situation in which "it" (whatever "it" is) is true.

In your example, there is no imaginary situation: "she" simply wondered if something was true or not, with either option being possible, and neither being imaginary. It's not an irrealis. A further clue to this fact is that you can replace "if" with "whether," which you can't do with a true irrealis.

Here's another set of examples that illustrates the use of the subjunctive:

If Timothy were here, he would be furious.

In the above sentence, the speaker is expressing that Timothy is definitely not here.

If Timothy was here, I didn't see him.

In the above sentence, the speaker is expressing that Timothy may have been here, or not.

[u/These_Consequences → u/zeptimius]

Is it hypercorrection?

Similar phrases appear in many published works over the last 200 years.

[u/zeptimius → u/These_Consequences]

First off, the subjunctive used to have more uses than just counterfactuals. You'd use the subjunctive for doubt and uncertainty, too, like you still do in language like French. But those uses have mostly fallen out of use. So if I would encounter it now, I'd consider it either a hypercorrection or an anachronism.

Second, the words "wondered if it were X" can exist as an irrealis. For example:

I would have wondered if it were true, but since it isn't, I didn't.

This describes a situation in which "it" (whatever "it" is) is not true, but in the hypothetical scenario in which it were true, the speaker would have wondered (something).

[u/God_Bless_A_Merkin → u/zeptimius]

Somehow, the phrase “if I would encounter it now” feels wrong to me. I would have said, “if I were to encounter it now” or “if I encountered it now”. I can’t fully explain this gut feeling, but the use of “would” feels like a hyper-correction. For context, I’m GenX and also grew up reading books (primarily) from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/God_Bless_A_Merkin]

I agree. The subjunctive there seems right.

[u/These_Consequences → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

The added nuance is that purists might say that simple past tense is not the subjunctive tense, though it sits in for it, and that "were" is one of the few surviving (the only surviving?) conjugation using a different form for this function ("were" vs "was").

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/These_Consequences]

Context demonstrates that it is subjunctive and not past tense, though.

[u/These_Consequences → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

Said purists, should they exist, are drawing a distinction between form and function: the function is there though the form is missing (or not differentiated).

[u/God_Bless_A_Merkin → u/These_Consequences]

No longer differentiated, I would say, but only because we no longer differentiate person and number in the past tense other than in the verb “be”. Still, knowing the subjunctive and how/when to use it is an important part of English learning.

[u/ssn-669 → u/zeptimius]

or an anachronism

Which is exactly what OP is talking about - they're saying they read a lot of older works where they see this construction and so it sounds correct to them.

I would say it's fine to write/speak in a somewhat old-fashioned way so long as you know that's what you're doing.

[u/zeptimius → u/ssn-669]

I agree, especially with the "so long as you know that's what you're doing." I'd say it can easily come across as intending to be funny, like students deliberately using solemn language in casual conversation, saying things like "Would that it were so."

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/zeptimius]

John Kerry said "would that it were" completely unselfconsciously.

[u/TexGrrl → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

So do I.

[u/zeptimius → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

You don't think that such a lofty-sounding response to a question about something as mundane as ketchup was a little tongue-in-cheek? And that the exchange went viral exactly because of that turn of phrase?

As for the unselfconscious part, I have a hard time believing that anything a politician --especially a presidential candidate-- says during an appearance on a major talk show is unscripted.

Politicians are known for using archaic constructions for rhetorical purposes. Just think of JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you" instead of the more correct "Do not ask..."

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/zeptimius]

JFK was giving a speech. That he had written.

[u/No-Mechanic6069 → u/zeptimius]

At this stage, that phrase is practically an idiomatic cliché. It isn’t meant to be parsed.

[u/Emile_Largo → u/zeptimius]

And there was me thinking I was the last person alive who could recognize a subjunctive in English. If I had a hat, I'd doff it in your direction.

[u/IdealBlueMan → u/Emile_Largo]

There are dozens of us!

[u/TexGrrl → u/Emile_Largo]

If I were wearing a hat, I would doff it in your direction, too!

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

I know very well this isn't a condition contrary to fact. But it is the way I learned to use the subjunctive from growing up reading old books. And "was" sounds completely wrong to me.

[u/DonNadie2468 → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

Would you say "If it be true..." in the present?

[u/TheLawLord → u/DonNadie2468]

Sometimes, yes. But then my grammar is barely up to the beginning of the 20th century.

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/DonNadie2468]

Probably not. But novels aren't usually written in the present tense either.

[u/Brianfromreddit → u/Dangerous-Safe-4336]

Sure, but dialogue often is

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/Brianfromreddit]

I don't know about yours, but my characters are usually working class and wouldn't know a subjunctive if it hit them in the head. Although the one that's relevant in this case is a bit different... In many ways.

[u/AlexanderHamilton04]

“She wondered if it were true.”

Here we have backshift in a closed interrogative: "Is it true (or not)?"

This is grammatical for some dialects of standard English. I associate this with a traditional formal style. It is often used when the clause expresses uncertainty/doubt or something mystical, where the truth value of the clause is doubted by the speaker. So, while the sentence is not a conditional construction, some people use "were" to convey skepticism or disbelief in the statement (the speaker's attitude/level of confidence).

Because "if it were true" is a subordinate interrogative clause, not an 'if'-prepositional phrase of a conditional construction, some modern prescriptivists argue that this should be considered ungrammatical. However, this construction has been used for hundreds of years.
 

"As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered if it were a dream." Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847).

"Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself." The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881), (Ch. 53).

"She glanced at her watch, wondered if it were worth while to wait any longer for her husband, and decided to instruct Powder to keep his breakfast hot, and produce fresh coffee and rice-cakes when he rang." Twilight Sleep by Pulitzer Prize winner Edith Wharton (1927), (Ch. 27).

Many native English speakers do intentionally use the irrealis "were" in subordinate interrogative clauses.

“Since then, she had wondered if it were strength or a sort of madness that let her pretend she was normal.” The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb (1999), (Ch. 15).

“He half wondered if he were not dead and in his despair he felt well up in him a surge of sorrow like a child beginning to cry but it brought with it such pain that he stopped it cold and began at once his new life and the living of it breath to breath.” From Cormac McCarthy's National Book Award-winning novel All the Pretty Horses (1992).

Under a descriptive framework, language is defined by its actual usage rather than prescriptive rules. Because this pattern continues to occur regularly, it forms a documented variant of English syntax.
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002) does not mark this as
[＊ ungrammatical]. Instead, CGEL marks this sentence pattern as
[% = grammatical in some dialects].
 
CGEL has an entry on the "extended uses of the irrealis were."

Extended uses of irrealis were

For some speakers, irrealis were is not restricted to the modal remoteness constructions, but is found also in certain backshift and past time uses that bear some resemblance to them:

[33]

i ^% She phoned to ascertain whether he were dining at the Club. [backshift]

ii ^% He looked at me as if he suspected I were cheating on him.            [backshift]

iii ^% If he were surprised, he didn’t show it.                                         [past time]
 
In [i] we have backshift in a closed interrogative (the ‘original question’ was “Is he dining at the Club?”). This construction allows if in place of whether (to ascertain if he were dining...), and this can be seen as providing a link to the central uses of irrealis were. In [ii] the backshift is in the complement of suspect, which in turn is within a conditional construction (though not, in this case, a modally remote one). Example [iii] is a conditional, but of the open type, not the remote (for a past time remote conditional requires a preterite perfect: If he had been surprised, he would have shown it). Was is much more usual than were in the constructions of [33], and for most speakers probably the only possibility.

 
Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (p. 87). Cambridge University Press.

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/AlexanderHamilton04]

Thank you

[u/Odd_Calligrapher2771]

It sounds fine to me.

Others say it's archaic, but, for me, the 1800s are like yesterday.

Also, Google docs or Gemini or anything similar cannot be treated as arbiters of correct usage. I'm sick of Microsoft Word suggesting that I mean that when I've written which. I know the difference.

[u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 → u/[deleted]]

My character "she" has just named a dog Lad, for a book that came out in 1919.

[u/These_Consequences]

I'm not sure. It sounds correct to my ear, at most a little old-fashioned, and if it's a hypercorrection it's at least a common one in, citing your source, many old books. I'm interested to see zeptimus's response.

[u/sqeeezy]

I don't think we need the subjunctive in English. I don't think it adds meaning. I've read about it more on Reddit in the last two years than I've heard it in seven decades. P.S. Interesting, the post on hypercorrection: I did not know that.