Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Just say it in the way that most native speakers say is not a wrong way.
If they say, If I were you, I would give it a whirl. We should say If I were you. |
According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language, "were" is usually used in "if I were you." But in other cases it has been replaced by "was", bringing it in line with other verbs, where the simple past tense is used for expressing hypotheses about the past and future, eg "if I only knew how."