When do you use werent

I feel that this is the realm of the subjunctive. Irrealis means that which is not real So much for my opinion. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 9 years, 4 months ago. Active 7 years, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question.

Tracey H. Both are correct, but to choiche one or other it need more context. This is a case where the irrealis subjunctive would be used by people who use the irrealis subjunctive. Not all English speakers do. Both versions mean the same thing. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. As they say: This use of were is highly exceptional: there is no other verb in the language where the modal remoteness meaning is expressed by a different inflectional form from the past meaning.

And later:. Improve this answer. Barrie England Barrie England k 10 10 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Yes, except this native speaker would sooner say If it wasn't for the hole , a bagel would be a bun. Otherwise it sounds to me as if OP's bagel-less universe lacks even the concept of "holes", let alone their potential value in the production of bagels and Polos — FumbleFingers.

I know that no one is interested with this: Italian language is totally based on subjuntive, thus the differences between "was" and "were" are enormous. It is possible they are all North American, however. The indicative shows that we believe some really are whatever, and we are trying to convince you of this. The subjunctive use means that they are not yet whatever, and we wish them to be. This is a consistent distinction in American English.

These really are completely different to the American ear. You may be used to it, but we are not. Show 11 more comments. The semantics of these sentences imply that the subordinate clauses are not true, so the past subjunctive forms are called for: I wish I were able to take that job.

If the main and subordinate clauses are both true or not known to be true or false, then the indicative verb forms are used: If I wasn't asked to help, at least I was willing to help. This is usually indicated by the word would or one of the other past form modal verbs could, might : If I were a rich man, I wouldn't have to work hard.

Let's turn, finally, to the sentence that your spelling checker flagged: The letter claimed exactly the same as the first, namely that if his letter wasn't published, he would be angry. It's just a different way of speaking. You may pass judgement on those communities for not speaking your version and cal them 'wrong', but it's how they speak and it's just a different rule.

Of course, you don't want to use this in school, work, or anything but very informal contexts using standard English US, UK, Aus, etc. Mitch , Jan 16 '19 at What you seem to miss here is that "We weren't going to" is not a subordinate clause.

It can be argued that "but Jordan I would argue that the sentence is a plain vanilla compound sentence, using "but" as a conjunction. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Wasn't vs. Weren't Ask Question. Asked 1 year, 9 months ago. Active 1 year, 9 months ago. Viewed 15k times. I'd appreciate your opinions on what you think the correct sentence would be and why.

Improve this question. GrammarQuestion GrammarQuestion 49 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. As far as I'm aware you can never use "was" with "we" in proper English. Improve this answer. Sure , that is the case for Standard English and the prescriptivist approach, but in really small communities, it is acceptable in that region.

But the question only asks whether "was" is correct in standard English; it doesn't ask whether it is correct in B's dialect, or why B thinks that "was" is correct in standard English. Since there is no information on B we don't even know whether B natively speaks English or another language , it would hard to answer that last question with the information given.

I have a small caveat: if we are talking about real possible conditions, is it still: " If we were rude to you T-christ's answer talks about reality vs impossible conditions, with the exception of the rule of using "were" applies only to unreal conditionals e. If I were a rich man, I would make more charitable donations.

What do you think, is this true regardless of the pronoun used "I, we" etc.? Show 1 more comment. Understanding Syntax by Maggie Tallerman 3. The subordinate clause is dependent on the matrix clause, as we'll see in a moment: 23 a. The main thing here to note is that by itself, the finite clause, "Ceri liked chips" would be an insubordinate clause and stand-alone, but since it is introduced by that it is a special type of subordinate clause or rather a complement clause as explained before: Some verbs, though, including say , wonder , claim , want and enquire typically take an argument which is an entire clause.

Matrix clauses can be complicated page 91 : 32 [They want [to know [whether we'd expect [to leave before breakfast]]]] What we find, then, is [ Accessed 14 Nov. More Definitions for weren't. Nglish: Translation of weren't for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of weren't for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of weren't. First Known Use of weren't , in the meaning defined above. Learn More About weren't.