Wish Sentences

[herbiji]

Hello dear teachers
I have been told that we use wish + past simple to express regret and we use would+infinitive to express annoyance.
so in a sentence like:
1- I am in the office.
A wish sentence would be like this:
I wish I was on the beach.
My question
would it be grammatically correct if I just use it in a negative form instead of adding new vocabularies to the sentence?
1- I'm in the office.
I wish I wasn't in the office. instead of ( I wish I was on the beach)
2- People drive too fast in the city center.
I wish people wouldn't drive too fast in the city center. instead of ( I wish people would drive slowly in the city center)
Thanks in advance

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello dear teachers
I have been told that we use wish + past simple to express regret and we use would+infinitive to express annoyance.
so in a sentence like:
1- I am in the office.
A wish sentence would be like this:
I wish I was on the beach.
My question
would it be grammatically correct if I just use it in a negative form instead of adding new vocabularies to the sentence?
1- I'm in the office.
I wish I wasn't in the office. instead of ( I wish I was on the beach)
2- People drive too fast in the city center.
I wish people wouldn't drive too fast in the city center. instead of ( I wish people would drive slowly in the city center)
Thanks in advance

Yes, they're fine. You can wish that people wouldn't do something, in the same way that you wish people would do something. You can wish you weren't somewhere as well as wishing you were somewhere else.

I am a teacher.
I wish I weren't a teacher.
I wish I were a doctor.
(Note you will hear "I wish I wasn't/was ..." in the last two sentence.)

I am at work.
I wish I weren't (wasn't) at work.
I wish I were (was) in the Maldives.

 

[herbiji]

Thanks
so
In a sentence like:
The streets are very dirty.
Can I say:
I wish the streets weren't very dirty.
Although I feel like it's somehow weird because as if you say it's ok that the streets be dirty but I wish not very dirty.
please correct me.

 

[bhaisahab]

Thanks
so
In a sentence like:
The streets are very dirty.
Can I say:
I wish the streets weren't very dirty.
Although I feel like it's somehow weird because as if you say it's ok that the streets be dirty but I wish not very dirty.
please correct me.

"I wish the streets weren't so dirty" would be more natural.

 

[emsr2d2]

Thanks
so
In a sentence like:
The streets are very dirty.
Can I say:
I wish the streets weren't very dirty.
Although I feel like it's somehow weird because as if you say it's ok that the streets be dirty but I wish not very dirty.
please correct me.

"I wish the streets weren't very dirty" doesn't sound very natural, you're right. I would use:

I wish the streets weren't dirty.
I wish the streets weren't so dirty.