Podcast 120 - B2 'wish' and 'if only'

Revision of structures with 'wish' and 'if only'

Hello. This is a follow-up from podcast 11, which was about 'wish' and 'if only' to talk about unreal or unlikely situations. I'm continuing on that theme today because I want to make it clearer about how to use these structures.

Some textbooks can be bit confusing, can't they? They're confusing because they often try to put a rule on how to use these words. Do we say 'I wish the rain stopped' or 'I wish the rain would stop'. One rule I have heard is "use past tense after 'wish' and 'not only' to express a present desire and use 'would' or 'could' plus the bare infinitive to express a present or future desire." Then my students got all confused. Were they referring to the present? Were they referring to the past? Sometimes it's not easy to know! Listen on to find out my solution to this problem. This is B2 level English. Here we go...

I'm going to make this podcast quite short. If I go on and on, then it will seem more and more complicated. My intention is to make this simple. Ok. So I'm just going to revise what happens when we use the words 'wish' and 'if only'.

I wish I had wings.

Right. So we have the past tense of the verb there 'had'. But it's not a past tense really, is it? It's a subjunctive. What is a subjunctive? Well, it's an aspect of the verb we need to use to talk about hypothetical situations. The subjunctive has other uses. But with 'wish' and 'if only' we are referring to hypothetical, unreal or unlikely situations.

B2 wishing for wings

I wish I had wings,

is unreal.

If only I could go out tonight,

suggests that it is unlikely.

As all good B2 students know, English doesn't have a very distinct form for the subjunctive. Not like Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, for example, or even French. In English, the past subjunctive just uses the past tense of the verb. With the verb 'to be', which has two past tense forms, we can use either in the subjunctive.

I wish I was/were wealthy.

I think 'were' sounds more elegant but both are possible with all persons.

What are you wishing for?

Revision over. Let's get on! What comes after these expressions? Well, it just depends on what you're wishing for? What might we wish for?

I'm not very handsome.
I don't get many reviews for my podcasts.
You study too much!

These are all present simple sentences, so if I'm going to wish things were different, I'll just use the past tense there.

I wish/if only I were more handsome.
I wish I got more reviews for my podcasts (please give me a good review in your podcast app!)
I wish you didn't study so much!

So, that was easy, wasn't it? You just need to think what it is exactly that you want to change.

I'm not very handsome but I wish I were more handsome.

Let's go on with present continuous.

I'm doing an exam tomorrow.
It's raining today.

I'd like those situations to be different:

I wish I wasn't doing an exam tomorrow.
I wish it wasn't raining.

Present continuous goes into the past - so, past continuous.

Here are some phrases in present perfect.

I've failed my English exam.
I've lost my passport.

Present perfect goes to past perfect.

I wish I hadn't failed my English exam.
I wish I hadn't lost my passport.

Let's now use 'can'.

I can't swim very well.

So 'can' goes to 'could'.

I wish I could swim better.

Let's now use future 'will'.

Will you ask him to do something for me?

So 'will' to 'would'.

I wish you would ask him...

Now when we complain about someone's behaviour, we also use 'would'. That's because we can use 'will' to complain about things we don't like.

He will bit his nails. I really hate that habit.
She will talk and talk. Why does she talk so much?

So with 'wish' or 'if only' we would use 'would'.

I wish he wouldn't bite his nails.
I wish she wouldn't talk so much.

So let's have a look at the example I used in the introduction. Do we say,

I wish it stopped raining,

or,

I wish it would stop raining.

Well, what is the problem we would like to change? The problem is,

It looks like it'll rain all day,

or, in a complaining sense,

It will rain (and I don't want it to)

so,

I wish it wouldn't rain.

'will' changing to 'would'.

'I wish it stopped' is not a good structure here because I can't really use present simple to talk about an action like the rain stopping in this context - so I can't use past simple in the 'wish' sentence. Or perhaps I could! Imagine I thought this.

Every time it rains, I stop it with my magical powers.

But it doesn't work. My magical powers don't work!

I wish the rain stopped every time I used my magical powers.

But now I'm getting complicated. I'm going to complain about myself!

I wish I wouldn't make my podcasts so complicated!*

Goodbye for now!

*Try to avoid using this 'I wish I wouldn't' structure! We don't usually use this.