From last lesson, at speed
One word per gap. Six wishes from the texts you read.
I wish I tell you the difference was dramatic.
What I wish is that I told them why I was leaving.
If only the message arrived an hour earlier.
I wish she answer my emails; it has been two years.
If only I what she meant by that.
I wish I waited an hour before pressing send.
A door open, and a door already shut
Hope, wish, and one step backwards
Two sentences that look like alternatives. I hope it rains tomorrow. I wish it would rain tomorrow. Both are about rain that has not fallen. Only one of them thinks it might.
Hope leaves the door open; wish has already shut it. To wish for something is to have decided, somewhere underneath the sentence, that it is not the case and is not going to be. Which is why I wish you would call me sounds like the end of a long series of unanswered messages, and I hope you call me sounds like the beginning of one.
That also explains the tense, which otherwise looks arbitrary. The past tense after wish is not about past time at all. It is the same distance device English uses in conditionals — one step backwards to mark something as not real. I wish I knew is about now, and takes a past simple. I wish I had known is about then, and takes a past perfect. Each is one step further back than the time it describes, and once you see that, there is nothing left to memorise.
Two more structures share the word and belong somewhere else entirely. I wish to make a formal complaint is a very formal way of saying want, with no unreality in it whatsoever — it is what you say at a desk, to somebody wearing a badge. And I wish you a happy birthday is frozen: you cannot take it apart or do anything else with it. Neither is what this unit is about, and both will turn up in an exam.
Three questions.
1. What is the difference between hope and wish?
2. Why is the tense one step back?
3. What is I wish to make a formal complaint?
Four patterns, and what were is doing there
The four patterns, and the question that picks each one
| What it is about | Form | Example | The question that picks it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A present state | wish + past simple | I wish I knew. I wish I had more time. | Is it true now, and outside my control? |
| A past event | wish + past perfect | I wish I had said something. | Does it point at one moment that has already passed? |
| Somebody else’s behaviour | wish + would | I wish they would answer. | Could a person change this, and are they not doing it? |
| Ability, any person | wish + could | I wish I could drive. | Is it about being able rather than being willing? |
Were, and where it is not optional. In careful writing, were goes with every person after wish and if only: I wish I were · he wishes he were · if only it were. In speech was is completely normal and nobody will blink.
Two places where it is not a choice. The fixed advice formula — if I were you, never was — and formal written English, where was reads as carelessness rather than as informality.
If only, and the two things it can do that wish cannot. It takes all the same patterns and carries more feeling. It can stand entirely alone — If only. Two words, a whole sentence, which English almost never permits. And it opens a paragraph comfortably, where I wish I had known at the start of one sounds like a shrug.
Rewrite each sentence using the word given, keeping the meaning the same.
It is a pity I do not speak Japanese. WISH
I am sorry I did not go to the funeral. WISH
She never answers her phone and it drives me mad. WOULD
I am not able to help you, unfortunately. COULD
It is a shame we sold the flat when we did. ONLY
I regret not asking her name. ONLY
I would like to make a formal complaint. WISH
There is still a chance it will not rain tomorrow. HOPE
Five questions.
1. I wish I ___ Japanese.
2. I wish I ___ to the funeral.
3. I wish she ___ her phone.
4. In a formal written piece, which is right?
5. Which sentence still thinks it might happen?
Six months of not phoning
Eight gaps. Choose the form that fits what the writer means.
My uncle rang every Sunday for about fifteen years and I answered perhaps one call in three. I that back now, obviously, and there is nothing to be done about it. I what we talked about; I have almost none of it. He died in March.At the funeral my cousin said she more about him, and half the room nodded, which tells you something about how families work. I rung him on the Sundays I was in and simply did not feel like it — not the ones when I was working, which I have forgiven myself for entirely.I my own son picked up the phone more often, and I am aware of the shape of that sentence as I write it. I it does not take him fifteen years. And I say I have learned something transferable from all this, but the only thing I have is a rule: answer the phone. If only somebody me that at twenty-five, in a way I would have listened to.
Six lines of one reflection, out of order. Put them into the order that builds.
- And I wish I could stop treating the whole thing as something that happened to me.
- What I actually wish is that I had asked her to teach me during the two years she offered.
- If only somebody had explained that a language is a person rather than a subject.
- I wish I spoke my grandmother’s first language, which is a lament and costs me nothing to say.
- I wish my mother would tell me more about that side of the family, though she has her reasons.
- That is a different sentence, and I notice it is much harder to write down.
Hope, or wish
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 8 minutes
Six situations, and one decision each: is this door open or shut? The verb you choose is a claim about the world, not a matter of style.
Four minutes each. Say the sentence, then say what your choice of verb has just claimed.
- A job you applied for three weeks ago and have heard nothing about · a friend who has not replied since August · rain, tomorrow, when you have tickets for something outdoors.
- A relative’s health · a language you have never studied · a habit of your own you have been meaning to change for two years.
- For each: say it with hope, then with wish, then say which one is honest.
- The last item is the interesting one. If you can only say it with wish, listen to what that admits — and then try saying it as a decision instead.
Which door was shut
Two questions.
1. On the last item — your own habit — which verb came out honestly?
2. What did switching from hope to wish change?
One step back
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. A present state takes which form after wish?
2. What is were doing in I wish I were?
Next. If only at full strength, the minimal-rewrite rule applied to your own life — and the other unreal form in English, the one that turns up after suggest and recommend.