Sixty thousand students killed themselves last year. If this was a war...

[MeyaN]

Sixty thousand students killed themselves last year. If this was a war this would have been one of the worst wars in terms of casualties.

Is the above usage of the pair 'was - would have been' correct? I came across native speakers using this pair while speaking. They said using 'had been - would have been' pair makes the sentence complicated and it's unnecessary for colloquial purposes'.

 

[bhaisahab]

I'd use 'if this had been a war, it would have been one of the worst in terms of casualties'.

 

[MeyaN]

I edited my question to make it more clear. Please read it again. Thank you.

 

[teechar]

Mixed conditionals are not uncommon in English. However, please take note of the sentence suggested by bhaisahab in post #2, especially how "it" (not "this") is used in the second part.

 

[emsr2d2]

I edited my question to make it more clear. Please read it again. Thank you.

Please don't edit posts after they have received responses. It can make the responses almost nonsensical sometimes.

 

[GoesStation]

I'd use the subjunctive: If this were a war it would have been one of the worst in terms of casualties.

 

[MeyaN]

"I'd use the subjunctive: If this were a war it would have been one of the worst in terms of casualties."

Do you prefer this to 'had been - would have been' pair? Both colloquially as well as for write-ups to make it easy to the ears and eyes of the listener and reader respectively?

 

[GoesStation]

Do you prefer this to 'had been - would have been' pair? Both colloquially as well as for write-ups to make it easy to the ears and eyes of the listener and reader respectively?

I think the subjunctive and the past perfect are equally acceptable in formal and colloquial American English. "If it were" uses one word less than "if it had been", so it wins for brevity.

 

[jutfrank]

I would point out that the sentence does not actually make complete sense as written, though it's obvious what the speaker means. She's talking about the figure of 60,000.

If this [figure of 60,000 represented the death toll of what had been a hypothetical war], it would have been one of the worst wars...

With the thought expanded like this, you can see more clearly the mix of conditionals.