As I’m writing a book in English I found myself using the Present Subjunctive as in:
Henrietta insisted that Evelyn be invited to the party, otherwise she would not come.
Doctor Quinten recommended that she should see a dermatologist. (Why not must? Would that be too strong? Very unenglish as we say over here?)
The children must not play in the garden, because I wouldn’t want all my beautiful flowers to be trampled on. Could this be replace by : ‘She insisted that the children not play…’
Is the present subjunctive always used in past tenses with expressions and words like ‘insist’, ‘it is important/ essential that’… I read on Wikipedia page that some British speaker don’t use that form.
Henrietta insisted that Evelyn be invited to the party, otherwise she would not come.
Doctor Quinten recommended that she should see a dermatologist. (Why not must? Would that be too strong? Very unenglish as we say over here?)
The children must not play in the garden, because I wouldn’t want all my beautiful flowers to be trampled on. Could this be replace by: ‘She insisted that the children not play…’
Is the present subjunctive always used in past tenses with expressions and words like ‘insist’, ‘it is important/ essential that’… I read on Wikipedia page that some British speaker don’t use that form.
For some the use of the Present Subjunctive in those examples might sound a little ‘precious’ and therefore I would agree that using a construction with ‘should’ is more common. The subjunctive is slowly disappearing but the examples you give are perfectly acceptable and I personally would use them. As for ‘should’ and ‘must’, the first is persuasive and the second is insistent in implication.
I would use them too, although - and I’m saying this being very careful because I don’t wish to hurt your feelings - I’m a lot younger than you judging from your avatar. By the way don’t change it, I like your pink tie, honestly.
But don’t these sentences often cause ambiguity. Or should it become clear from the context whether the sentence is past or present or are the ones I’ve given you always past.
Let me give you another one:
I meet my best friend Michael who’s throwing a party and he desperately wants me to come to it.
I go home and tell my mother: I met Michael just a minute ago and he instisted that I come to his party.
So the party is yet to come, but my meeting with Michael is past.
Naturally, if you write a book in the past, then it’s obvious that those sentences have a past meaning. My feeling is that they are always past, unless you write a sentence like this one:
It’s essential that the children be vaccinated against the swine flu.
Why I would use those sentences, because I like them, I love the English language and though disappearing I still think the present subjunctive is very, very British. I was born in the wrong country and no matter how good your English accent might be, almost that you cannot tell a native apart from a non-native, an Englishman will always know you’re a foreigner, because as Henry Higgins said: Whereas other people are instructed in their native language, English people aren’t. I don’t know whether that is true or not.