I have a SPANISH FRIEND LEARNING ENGLISH. SHE IS CONFUSED AS TO WHEN YOU CAN USE I WAS AND I WERE.?

Question

CAN YOU USE I WERE AS IN (TOPOL) IF I WERE A RICH MAN ETC?

Answer 1

Yes - it's called the past conditional tense, and means that Midge Ure's 'If I Was' is grammatically incorrect.

Answer 2

This is not the subjunctive, as other answerers have suggested. (The subjunctive of "I am" is "I be"). It is the conditional tense. Your friend is confused because it would be the subjunctive mood in Spanish, but in English we use a different tense. It is extremely easy, in fact, in the present tense as the verb is the same for each person -- if I were, if you were, etc. etc. It expresses a wish or a condition which is on the whole unlikely to be fulfilled. I am delighted to tell you that Topol is grammatically correct. "If I were a rich man". He goes on in the song to tell of what he would do -- "would do" also being conditional tense. Listen to Topol!
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/conditional2.htm

Answer 3

It's pretty simple. "I was" is the past tense of the verb "to be", the present tense of which is "I am". So anytime you friend wishes to speak of herself in the past, she would use "I was". "I were" is in and of itself never gramatically correct when used as I did in the quotation marks. "Were" is the conditional sense of English, and is not limited to the past tense. It applies to the past, present, and future. For example, your friend could say, "If I were alive 100 years ago, I would never have had the chance to become a doctor." Or she could say, as does the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz", "If I were King of the Forest....". Or, for the future, she could say, "If I were elected President in 2012, I would pull the troops out of Iraq." All these examples are based on a certion "condition" existing, which is why this is the conditional tense of the verb "to be".

Answer 4

Caicos Turkey is 100% correct. Anyone who said that only "I was" is correct must go back to basic English classes. "I were" (same as he were, she were) is used for conditional and no, it's not past conditional but PRESENT conditional. For past conditional, use auxiliary verb "had"+past participle.
Present conditional: If I were a rich man now (but I am not), I would buy nice clothes.
Past conditional: If I had gone to Mexico last year (but I was not), I would have learned some Spanish.

Answer 5

If I was a rich man, using were in this sense is incorrect, but most people tend to write as they speak.

Some one may say, 'I would not do that if I were you.'

To be precise, If I was (singular)
If we were (plural)

That said, be aware, there is a shortened common version of we were and we are, we're, this is where life gets complicated with English.

The biggest problem I had with learning foreign laguages, including Spanish is that in England it is rare for someone to learn grammar and even rarer to learn verb structure, so in most cases people use English incorrectly and then when coming to learn another laguage we cannot do it, simply because we do not properly know our own language.

Therefore you will get a lot of people thinking that 'If I were a rich man' is correct.

Answer 6

"I were" indicates what is technically called the subjunctive mood or a counterfactual. In everyday terms this means that a sentence like "If I were the king ...." implies two things: (1) I am not actually the king (2) but if I happened to be the king then whatever is in the .... bit will happen. Using "I was X" means that in the past X actually happened to me.

Answer 7

Use I were in cases where like you said, where whatever you are describing is not true. Use I was to describe a past condition; "I was late this morning, If I were faster at getting ready I would be on time."

"if I were" is like wishful thinking while I was states a fact.

Answer 8

For most constructions, "I was" is appropriate. For the subjunctive, however, it is "I were". Example: "If I were going to the theater, I would meet you in the lobby." The subjunctive is not used in English as much as it used to be, or as it is in some foreign languages.

Answer 9

'I were' is correct when used in the context of wishing or supposition. e.g if I were to meet you. If I were rich.

If I had gone to Mexico last year (but I did not)

Answer 10

'I were' can be used as the subjunctive...that is with 'if'.
"If I were a carpenter" is correct. "If I was a carpenter" is not.
So you see, "If I were a rich man" is grammatically correct.

Otherwise it's:-
I was
You were
He/She was
We were
You were
They were.