11-Sep-2006, 02:16
|
| Key Member | | Join Date: Aug 2006 Country: Canada
Posts: 3,025
Current Location: Canada First Language: English Thanks: 4
Thanked 478 Times in 440 Posts
| |
 Re: variation of conditionals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrPedantic  Hello Ana Laura
Just to clarify:
3. Was he to lose his job, he would not find a new one quickly.
— In British English, although the form "if he was to do X, Y would happen" is common, the inverted version ("Was he to do X, Y would happen") is quite rare, even in non-standard English. This is the usual version:
4. Were he to lose his job, he would not find a new one quickly.
MrP | Mr P's right. Thanks for covering that, Sir. This is the norm for all of English. CGEL [page 86; footnote 7]: "Two places where were cannot be replaced by was are inverted conditionals (... were I not working on ...) and the fixed phrase as it were; if I were you bears some resemblance to a fixed phrase and was is less usual here than in conditionals generally. |