Regret, and its neighbours
Eight words for looking back. Match each to what it actually means.
Four reflections
A · Marta, who left at twenty-four and came back at forty
If I had stayed, I would have a house by now and probably a different set of complaints. People here talk about my sixteen years abroad as if they were an adventure. They were mostly work, and a flat with a boiler that never worked.
What I regret is not going. It is that I went as an escape and told everybody it was ambition, and then had to keep the story up for sixteen years. If I had said the true thing at twenty-four, I would have had a much easier decade.
B · Nuno, who stayed
I get asked whether I ever wanted to leave roughly four times a year, always by people who left. The honest answer is that I did not, and nobody believes it, because there is no good way to say it that does not sound like a defence.
If I were the kind of person who wanted to be somewhere else, I would have gone. I have watched three friends go and two come back, and I notice that the ones who came back are the only ones who still ask me the question.
C · Sofia, who changed direction at thirty-six
I left law for teaching and I do not regret it. I want to be precise about what I do regret, because "no regrets" is a sentence I do not believe when other people say it.
I regret the four years I spent deciding. If I had done it at thirty-two, I would be a head of department by now rather than starting again at forty. The change was right. The timing was cowardice, and cowardice is expensive in a way that is easy to hide from yourself.
D · Rui, whose brother took the other road
This is unusual: I can see the life I did not have, because my brother is living it. We applied to the same programme in 2009. He got in, I did not, and neither of us has ever quite got over how thin the difference was.
So I do not have to imagine. If I had got that place, I would be doing what he does, and I know exactly what that looks like on a Tuesday in February. He is not happier than I am. He is not less happy either. What I did not expect is how little difference it made, and how long it took me to find that out.
Seven statements. Decide which speaker each is true of. A speaker may be the answer more than once.
A Marta
B Nuno
C Sofia
D Rui
1. Regrets the reason given for a decision rather than the decision.
2. Says the counterfactual is observable rather than imagined.
3. Names a delay, rather than a choice, as the expensive part.
4. Points out that the people asking the question are the ones who reversed their own answer.
5. Refuses a common phrase because they do not believe it in other people’s mouths.
6. Says the difference between the two outcomes turned out to be very small.
7. Argues that a permanent character trait would already have produced the action.
What the four were doing, and how it sounds
Read only the conditionals. If I had stayed, I would have a house by now · If I had said the true thing, I would have had an easier decade · If I were the kind of person who wanted to leave, I would have gone · If I had done it at thirty-two, I would be a head of department by now · If I had got that place, I would be doing what he does.
Five sentences, and only one of them has both halves in the same time. That is not unusual writing. That is what reflection sounds like.
Say it, don’t read it. Two things happen in the mouth here.
Conditional intonation. The if clause rises and holds; the result clause falls. If I had stayed ⟋ I’d have a house by now ⟍. Run them together on one flat line and the listener cannot tell where the condition ends.
Stress in wish. Where the stress lands changes the meaning. I WISH I’d asked — the regret is the point. I wish I’d asked — somebody else asked, and I did not. I wish I’d ASKED — I did something else instead.
Four sentences have been removed from a fifth reflection. Put each one back where it belongs.
I did not take the redundancy in 2016, and everybody who did has done better than me. [1]
If I had taken it I would have had eleven months of salary and a reason to move. [2] I would have gone to my sister’s, badly, and come back within the year.
[3] What I actually wish is that I had been asked to stay, rather than simply not being made to go. Those are different things and only one of them is about me.
I have stopped saying I regret it. [4] It is that regret needs a version of events where I chose, and I did not choose. I waited, and the choosing happened elsewhere.
That is a harder sentence to say out loud than the regret would have been.
Same lives, your forms
Seven gaps. Choose the form that matches the distance being marked.
If Marta , she says she a house by now. What she regrets is the reason she gave: if she the truth at twenty-four, she an easier decade. Nuno says that if he the kind of person who wanted to leave, he long ago. Rui does not have to imagine anything, and he says he how small the difference would turn out to be.
Seven sentences from the same four lives. One error each.
1. If she would have stayed, she would have a house now.
2. If he was the kind of person who wanted to leave, he would have gone. — in writing
3. If she had changed at thirty-two, she would have been a head of department by now.
4. I wish I would have said the true thing.
5. If I got that place, I would be doing what he does. — the application was in 2009
6. She regrets the four years that she spent to decide.
7. I wish I know what he knows about himself.
Take one of them on
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 4 minutes each
Choose one of the four. Speak as them, in the first person, five years after the extract.
Four minutes. Do not read the extract — rebuild it, and add one thing they have since worked out.
- Open with where they are now and what has changed.
- Use at least two conditionals with results in the present, not the past.
- Use one wish about now and one about then, and make the difference audible.
- Finish with the sentence they still cannot say comfortably.
Listener’s job. Two columns. Write every conditional you hear, split into the half that is unreal in the past and the half that is unreal now.
At the end, read them back as pairs. Your partner will hear immediately where both halves collapsed into the same time — which is the error the whole unit is about.
Where the halves collapsed
Two questions.
1. When both halves collapsed into the past, which half was wrong?
2. Why does that happen?
One of five had matching halves
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. In real reflective speech, how often do both halves of a conditional sit in the same time?
2. What does stress do in I wish I’d asked?
Next. The argument that there is no such thing as a mixed conditional — and why that makes the whole area smaller rather than larger.