Hey Everyone!
I’ve got some questions about this kind of structure, “I wish you were here”. What I’d like to know is if the “I wish” always goes with simple past or could it be “I wish” + past perfect. I can’t figure out what it would be like, though. So, could anyone give a couple of examples using the “I wish” + past simple and also the “I wish” + past perfect, in case there are such examples.
By the way, why do you have to use the “were” with this kind of conditional such as “I wish mum were here”. Well, for me it would go like, "“I wish mum was here”
Traditionally, “I wish” goes with the past subjunctive; “I wish he were here” is past subjunctive, just as “I wish he came over”. The past subjunctive always has the same form as the past simple, except for the verb “to be”.
Because both tenses are so much alike, they have often been confused; that is why the past simple has become acceptable to many teachers in addition to the past subjunctive. In most sentences, it is only a different name, because you cannot tell them apart; the only visible result of this acceptance is that “I wish he was here” has become acceptable to many.
“I wish I had told you”, a correct sentence, is past perfect subjunctive; but the same development as with the past subjunctive has happened here, because the form is indistinguishable from that of the past perfect; for this tense there are no exceptions.
When you use the past perfect form after “I wish”, you are talking about the past and what you would like to be different about the past.
I wish I had studied for my test. = I did not study for my test, and it would have been better if I had studied. (Maybe I would have passed my test if I had studied. Because I did not study, I failed.)
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[size=75]“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.” [/size]
I wish I had a million dollars. = I don’t have a million dollars now, but I would like to have a million dollars.
I have another question, though. Is it the same case with dollars and millions when you refer to an exact amount. For example, “I have a lot of millions that’s why I’m rich.” But if I say “My fortune is about 20 million dollars or dollar?” I’m not sure what the correct one is…
Sorry, I got confused with the “was” and “were” thing. So, if I say, “If I were/was a rockstar, I would be famous”. In this case, which is the most suitable to have in this kind of conditional sentece. Please, help me out guys.
It is always “dollars” with “million”, “hundred” etc: “a million dollars”, “twenty million dollars”, “millions of dollars” etc. Except when you use it in a compound adjective: “a twenty-million-dollar house”.