Conditional

[MrPedantic]

1. If I would eat better food, I would be healthier.
2. If he would eat better food, he would be healthier.

#1 sounds odd to me not for grammatical reasons, but because to speculate upon your own willingness to do something as if you had no say in the matter seems odd.

#2 sounds fine to me; I would paraphrase it as "if he were willing to eat better food, he would be healthier".

What about this one:

3. If I would eat better food, I would be healthier? What on earth are you talking about! I eat perfectly healthy food!

MrP

[riverkid]

MrPedantic: 1. If I would eat better food, I would be healthier.
2. If he would eat better food, he would be healthier.

#1 sounds odd to me not for grammatical reasons, but because to speculate upon your own willingness to do something as if you had no say in the matter seems odd.

I agree, Mr P that it is hardly the norm but why couldn't a person say this in a moment of despair? Say they had just had some serious life threatening incident and they say to the doctor or a friend;

If I WOULD eat better food, I would be healthier, but that just ain't gonna happen.

Or as a reply to someone who had said;

A: If you would eat better food, you would be healthier.

B: You're right of course; if I wooouulld eat ...




What about this one:
3. If I would eat better food, I would be healthier? What on earth are you talking about! I eat perfectly healthy food!

It's fine to my mind.

[Tdol]

In virtually all of the first person examples we are having to add further context, which wouldn't be necessary with the second or third person. Alone, it still doesn't work for me.

[Bluefields]

Riverkid, nice to have you with me. Your examples are bang on, but it's not clear how many are convinced.

Here are a few more comments.

"Only" is necessary to express regret only where there's no question of obstinate refusal. Otherwise, "would/n't" achieves the function unaided, and needn't include the meaning of habit.
In my previous post I used the term "obstinate refusal" and thought that to include in this annoyance at one's own bad habit was unproblematic. Apparently not for everybody. Could I have avoided the problem by changing O.R. to "regret" ? Not quite.
We have "would" sentences expressing O.R. (obviously including regret), and "only" sentences expressing regret but no O.R. (the hammer sentence). But by my intuitions, even if it is somebody's fault you can't use "would" without O.R.
"If you would have lent me the money,..." is O.K.
but not
'If you would have remembered to bring the hammer,..".

Is this a problem for the poll sentence ? Maybe changing O.R. to "regret at refusal" helps a bit. Then it all comes down to whether regret at failure to give up one's own bad habit is similar enough to regret at refusal to give up one's own bad habit.
It works for me. Grammatically and semantically sound, and we're talking about expressing a strong emotion, annoyance with yourself. If the speaker sees it this way, he can so.
Tdol, I can't see why more context is needed for the 1st. person, but might be convinced. Can you elaborate ?

[Tdol]

If he would eat better, he would be healthier.
No further context required- the obstinacy/regret is implied directly by the speaker judging someone else.
If I would stop injecting heroin five times a day, I would be healthier.
No further context required- not an easy pattern of behaviour to change.
If only I would eat better, I would be healthier
Fine
If I would eat better, I would be healthier
That's easy- go to the shop and buy a bag of carrots and a few bananas. Yes, we can add intonation, or further context, but the original decontextualised sentence does not automtically carry the regret to me. If we add a video of an obese person in tears saying it, it will work, but looking at the words in black and white, there's nothing really there to show it, while simply adding 'only' puts the matter beyond doubt. The strong emotion would be in the tears we can't see or the intonation we cannot hear. I didn't say it was wrong, but that it did not work for me, not without additions.

[Qasem]

I put the first one; what do u think about it?
is correct or not?

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Qasem

I put the first one; what do u think about it?
is correct or not?

Both are correct, Qasem but the normal neutral is the second on. The first is used in more emotive situations.

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[riverkid]

Hello Tdol.

I can understand that you missed the meaning, I did too at first. But context is vital to meaning. A stand alone sentence can/could mean different things to different people. The printed word is not all that great at conveying nuance.

Which sentence below means "Leave right now" and which means "I find it awfully difficult to believe that"?

1) Get outta here.

2) Get outta here.

[csharp]

it's the unreal conditions in present time, so we use the second

[tungvn261]

I think, he was still not healthy at the time he said, so we should use the Conditional Type 2. Am I right???