If Singaporeans properly used the conditional more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Sometimes it seems that "would" is not part of some Singaporeans' English vocabulary. By that, I don't mean that they're rude, or that they are the types who would say "Uncle, I wan this" rather than "I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît" when ordering from the hawker stall.
Rather, I mean it's really not part of their vocabulary. It's like got no sense of conditional mood one. Let me illustrate. Take for example, the recording for the NDP 1988 song "We are Singapore":
"There was a time, when people said that Singapore won't make it ... but we did."
Wah, official government-sanctioned song one and got gross grammar error! I in fact cringe every time I hear that part of the song, though the rest is fine as far as aesthetic propaganda goes.
On further analysis, if some people really wish to protest, it appears there is a /d/ somewhere in the middle of "won't". But if the singer had been really saying "wouldn't" at the time, it would seem his pronunciation is a bit off. Wodn't make it? How did the /u/ become an /o/? You go through Romance sound changes or what?
Technically, there are two main types of "would", not including further derivations like "would have been". One is in a hypothetical sentence:
If Singaporeans used the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
Which takes the form of [past subjunctive clause], [conditional clause]. Note that although the first clause ("if Singaporeans used ...") is in the past subjunctive, it's a "present hypothesis". The hypothesis supposes that if you could change something about the present situation, something would happen. It just happens that in English, using the past tense is the way to render the hypothetical subjunctive. It occurs in many other Indo-European languages too, apparently. We'll come to that later. Basically, keep in mind that the past tense of subjunctive "used" is in the "modal present" for this context. A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense. We'll come to that later.
Anyhow, the other is in a "past future" sentence. What in the world is a past future sentence, you say? How is that not a self-contradiction? Well, let me demonstrate:
The government promised they wouldn't raise the GST.
Okay, not fair lah. Guv'men never made such promise liddat one. Got another one:
George Bush Sr. promised there wouldn't be any new taxes.
At the time, George Bush the Elder said, "there will be no new taxes". (Well actually he said, "read my lips: No new taxes", but you get the idea.) It was a past promise of what would happen in the future - at that point in the past. Now, with our perspective of the present, we render that "future clause" in the "past of the future", with would, which is the past tense of the auxiliary verb will (as in I will do it). Hence, "there wouldn't be any new taxes".
If I were to write "George Bush promised there won't be any new taxes", I must be living in a time before George Bush passed the 1990 US Budget but after he got elected, because well, that clause can only remain in the future if it hasn't happened yet (or has not been prevented from happening). Even after this condition is fulfilled, there is a potential for tense conflict due to inconsistency in tense. This is the issue of whether one would say "I didn't know that today was a half-day" or whether "I didn't know that today is a half-day". But that's for another post.
What's the difference between the "past of the future" and the conditional anyway? They both correspond to one auxiliary verb mood with "would", do they not? Does this question really matter? Well, I suppose it does since they could be two different grammatical concepts and we want to find out why Singaporeans omit them at times, do we not? We will examine this later.
There are some further "extra" uses for "would", that are fairly related or can be thought of special cases of one of the two situations above.
"I would like some of that tofu, s'il vous plaît."
No one would say this to a hawker, I hope, since it was just an exaggeration of the kind of euphemistic language used in polite company. With formal French s'il vous plaît tossed in for comic effect. But suppose there be an ang-moh tourist who doesn't get that the hawker centre is the place where you tutoyer and you dispense with formality.
"Could I have some of that, er, what do you call it? Horr fun?? Whore fun?! Well, okay, I would like to have of that please?"
*cough*
This is the use of the conditional in order to make a polite request. Well, where's the subjunctive clause? It's actually implied. "If you it would please you / if you would grant my request / if it's acceptable to you / if it doesn't bother you too much .... I would like this." The idea is, well, you would want something only if the owner were happy to give it. Well, duh. But it's a bit deeper: due to the rules of society and all, it's not nice to leave someone wanting. So the idea is not to vex the person you're requesting a service from.
If he's happy to serve, then you want it. If he's not, then you don't want it (or you say you don't want it even though you really do). That way, by saying "I would like", you ritualistically give room for the person being asked to refuse (although this doesn't really happen in practice). This occurs even in business transactions, especially in the French language, in the form of "je voudrais" or "pourrais-je..." It's partly also due to a euphemistic nature. The more verbs you put between yourself (i.e. the pronoun "I", specifying yourself) and your actual request, the more distance you put between yourself and the speaker, in order not to potentially offend. Which is why formality is almost mutually incompatible with familiarity.
The sheer flexibility of what if-clauses a person can imply for politeness with "would" can be confounding. Am I implying "if it doesn't bother you" or "if it pleases you" whenever I use "would" for politeness? It seems to evolve into a new mood all on its own: it can almost take this use out of the conditional and put this in one of them fancy optative moods that doesn't exist in English but perhaps might as well. It consigns verbs and exchanges between speaker an audience to a whole world of wanting. For example, let us examine another use of "would", modifying my first hypothetical statement slightly:
If Singaporeans would use the conditional properly more often, I wouldn't be so annoyed.
It sounds like a valid sentence, but what happened to the past subjunctive? How can I have two conditional clauses in a hypothesis? Well, actually the first is not really the conditional really. For proof, if I were to say:
I wish I would be rich (as opposed to if I were rich)
or
If it wouldn't have snowed (as opposed to if it hadn't snowed)
or
if I would be you
I would sound slightly funny, because it's just grammatically incorrect: these are conditional uses attempting to replace the subjunctive. Yet, "if Singaporeans would use" sounds okay it must mean that clause is rather equivalent to the subjunctive. Or rather, it's that optative (a close relative of the subjunctive) we were talking about. This because I am making a subjunctive wish (optative) that they use the conditional properly more often. I want them to use the conditional properly.
One should further note that "if it would please you ... I would like this" and "if it doesn't bother you" both show that the "polite would" request doesn't conform to the normal "if" hypothesis structure, something which will be covered somewhere below. When I say, "if you would only stop being so annoying", I am using a special kind of "request mood". This becomes special mood becomes evident in a phrase like "I wish you would stop being so annoying", where the "would" replaces the subjunctive, and the structure as a whole replaces the infinitive of "I want you to stop". The second clause "... that you would stop being so annoying" has no accompanying hypothetical-if structure. Hence, this kind of "would" not just a simple conditional.
There's also the "rhetorical would", which is sort of like the combination of the polite would, and the hypothesis would, depending on the exact context. It rather assumes the implication of, "assuming our premises is true" coupled with "if you please". It wasn't my intention, but discussing grammar often invokes lots of rhetorical uses of would. Let me list some of the rhetorical woulds used in this post:
it would seem
one would say
they are the types who would say
no one would say this
[if I were to say] .... I would sound
A past hypothesis would use the pluperfect tense [if we were making a past hypothesis]
You can try to figure out the implicit hypotheses yourselves, with the last two given. And yes, rhetorical woulds deal a lot with saying something. This is not a coincidence. ;-0
Yet another type of "would" is the "past habitual action" would. "When I used to walk to primary school, every morning I would get up and leave at 6:20 am in the morning, and I would walk through the awakening market under the blanket of stars ... " In this case "would" is synonymous to "used to", except it's cleaner and is used to replace it perhaps because it's only needed for consistency. It's close to the French imparfait as well as Greek and PIE aorist: English has in fact lost quite a few simple tenses over the millenia compared to its ancestors, to the extent that both the sense of "future" and "past habitual action" now need to be conveyed with periphrastic constructions like "going to", "will", "used to" and "would".
If you are starting to get confused, don't worry. The conditional, optative and subjunctive *and* the future tense are all related. There is a theory that Proto-Indo-European didn't have a real future tense at all (just like English). Rather, some of its descendants formed it by combining the desiderative (a want-related verb form) with the subjunctive. When Latin speakers wanted to make a subjunctive hypothesis, they used a format of si [subjunctive], [subjunctive], rather than si [subjunctive], [conditional]. The Romance languages like French and Spanish - the descendants of Latin - invented the conditional tense separately from the Germanic languages themselves. To know this, it helps to know the reason behind the formation of the Romance future, which is much different from the Latin future.
Latin renders the future tense (in the indicative, singular and for the first three persons) for amare as: amabo, amabis, amabit, whereas French goes: aimerai, aimeras, aimera. The ama- => aim- is a regular and expected sound change. The -bo => ai is not. (One should also know that amare/aimer are regular verbs and are frequently cited as they are models for conjugating many other verbs in Latin and French respectively.) This sudden change occurs because they use different constructions. In Proto-Romance and Vulgar Latin, the "street forms" of classical Latin (just like Singlish to English), the future tense was actually periphrastic. This was just like in English, except with the verb habere ("to have") (habere => haveir => avoir for French / avere for Italian / haber for Spanish ) rather than "will". The link was from obligation to future action. Thus, it doesn't take a great leap from "I have to do something" => "I will do something". In those days, due to syntax of Latn, the auxiliary verbs tended to go in front. Hence, the infinitive first, followed by the conjugated forms of "habere". "I will love" would thus be, "amare habeo."
But in time, as Vulgar Latin broke up, the syntax for word order was reversed and the idea behind the Romance future as an infinitive + auxiliary construction was lost. The custom became thought of as a "simple tense". Yet, it is still possible to detect this Vulgar Latin custom in the Romane languages, even today.
In French aimera for instance, it is really composed of aimer + a ([he] will love: [he] has to love), as well with aimerai <= aimer + ai (I will love) and aimeras <= aimer + as (you will love). And the conditional forms? Put avoir in the subjunctive, which is ais, ait, ayons, ayez, aient. Thus, aimer + ait => aimerait (were he to have to love => he would love); aimer + aient => aimeraient (were they to have to love => they would love); aimer + ayons => aimerions (were we to have to love => we would love).
This happened in Old English too: make a conditional tense by subjunctivising the future tense. How do you put something in the subjunctive? You could make it past tense. Ta-da! You get would, the past tense of will, to express the conditional. You also get would, to express past wishes of the future, would, to express past habitual actions, and would, to subjunctivise requests like "will you get the door?" into "would you get the door?" Or probably more like, "would you get our weapons so we can overrun Londonium?", but you get the idea.
As a result, "would" is one of them preterite-present verbs. It's a verb that is historically the past tense of another verb, and well, it's kind of tough to literally take the past tense of what is an already conjugated past tense form. Hence, one cannot say, "I musted do it!", but has to say "I had to do it!" to convey an obligation in the past tense. This is because "must" is already the past tense of Old English motan, "to have to". It was historically put in the past subjunctive for politeness reasons too. However, we may not realise this because the verb motan, present tense and everything, has all but disappeared, save for its past tense.
One can easily find other preterite-presents: you can't say I woulded, coulded, shoulded or what have you, for the same reasons that you can't say musted. Canned is well, different for reasons that are obvious.
So why do I bring all this history up? The uses of "would" are grammatically myriad and sometimes complex to classify. There are grammatical functions that are hard to replace through circumvention or by omitting the "would" in favour of the simple future. Besides, some of the inflection - unlike some others as I will talk about in my next post - is useful.
I do note that the Singlish dialect generally can get away with not using it:
"Haha, that Ah Pek, he go (and) say I'll win one, but look at how much I won already liao."
[Ah Pek said that I wouldn't win, but look at how much I have won already.]
Note that while the inflection is dropped with "go (and) say", the event of Ah Pek telling our speaker his advice is clearly in the past. Also, strong verbs (verbs that change vowel grade based on tense, e.g. "sing/sang/sung", "fly/flew/flown", and in this case "win/won") often tend to remain conjugated in Singlish, though not always - sometimes it depends on context, emphasis and position within the sentence whether it's conjugated or not. Anyhow, "go [verb]" often acts as a past tense marker in Singlish, in the logic of "he went and did this", whereas "to go" would mark the future in other contexts ("I'm going to fly off tomorrow"). So, anyway, before you think that "won't" isn't changed to "wouldn't" simply perhaps because of the same non-conjugation principle (which is arguably conjugated in the past anyhow), I can also envision this:
"Ayah, he already told me he won't go liao."
Which can have two interpretations:
"He has told already told me he isn't going."
OR
"He told me he wouldn't be going [but he went!]"
But note that I defend Singlish, but hate Singaporean grammar errors in the standard English register (as I have clarified before). The first has a grammar, the second is just annoying. If I say in Singlish "how come you never do homework one!", I can either mean "why didn't you do your homework?" or "why do you keep refusing to do your homework?" If I could toss in "aw hor! [you're screwed / shame on you]" in there along with the right tone inflection, I would unambiguously specify the former. If I toss in "always" in there instead, I would specify the latter. Singlish can get away with this because it often relies on tone and various other cues: standard English isn't quite so rich in particles and tone inflection as Singlish is. Therefore, one should switch to "would" when the wish for the future is in the past, if one is speaking in the standard English register.
Now, I really feel guilty to bring up a friend's blog, but here is an excerpt from Carissa, a friend from primary school, to show how it creeps up in even quite acrolectic (i.e. fairly standard and professional) registers.
"If there was a subject called 'Movies, Celebs, Eyecandies & You', I'll totally ace it"
There are two things that could be highlighted here. One is the subjunctive "if there was" clause. Some grammarians regard this as ungrammatical and incorrect. I regard it as colloquial, something you wouldn't write in your A-level essays but perfectly acceptable for speech and blogging. Also note, there can be indicative "if there was" clauses. More on this later. Anyhow, I don't think this is such a gross error because it doesn't sacrifice the main feature of the past subjunctive: putting things in the "unreal past", which is the main concept - change something in the past to modify a concrete thing in the present; change something something in the pluperfect (more than past) in order to change something about the past. The subjunctive "were" has this feature of being the same whether it is singular or plural. Besides, "was" is mainly understood easily without any flinching, because the past tense is the main concept.
The omission of "would" however (in this case, "I'd" in contracted form, which has a tendency to merge with "I'd" of "I had" sometimes) to me is considerably more serious, since it blots out a whole grammatical concept with it. And Carissa is a rather strong and rhetorical writer as she is - which alerts me to something about the state of disuse "would" might be facing even in the acrolectical dialects of Singaporean society.
Sometimes even Members of Parliament mar the structure. Let's try the p65 blog:
... I personally do not believe even if Crazy Horse were allowed to place advertisements wherever they like, the show would have done much better than it did.
-- "Regulation of Advertisement Standards", Baey Yam Keng
Now, Baey Yam Keng is one of the more progressive and responsive members of the p65 blog, (compared to the arrogant Josephine Teo, whose writing style I cannot stand, and Lateef who doesn't approve comments that make critique over any part of her posts). So this is not a personal dig at them or whatever (even if I do favour the opposition). But there's an "if-clause" structure error here.
As a reminder, this is how hypotheses are structured:
If I receive a million dollars ..... I will be very happy.
If I received a million dollars ..... I would be very happy.
If I had received a million dollars ..... I would have been very happy.
Baey's error is in saying "if Crazy Horse were allowed .... ". This is the past subjunctive, and affects the present condition (crazily enough, crazily ...). One has to say "even if Crazy Horse had been allowed" in order to follow up with "would have been".
Note that for indicative hypotheses like the first example, there is more flexibility depending on context. I can say, "if your rice tastes so hard, it means you didn't cook it enough"; "if it's not very wet outside, that means it hasn't been raining for very long", etc. I can use future perfect or present continuous tenses or whatever. However, if I am talking about personal decisions, my sentences will generally follow the structure outlined above; most exceptions to this will be in places where future plans are idiomatically stated in the present (simple and continuous). Hence, "if it's not raining out, I'm going for a walk" only works because "I'm going for a walk" means "I will take a walk".
However, subjunctive hypotheses definitely do not have any such flexibility and must follow fixed structure. You cannot say, "if water were to boil at zero degrees Celsius, there must be no oceans now", for example. But I can say, "if SPECTRE [supervillain of your choice] has caused all water on this planet to boil at zero degrees Celsius, all the oceans in the world must be disappearing!" The first statement is subjunctive; the second is likely to occur in the context of a fiction film where reality gets defied (should I say, totally, totally, raped) from time to time anyway so it is its plausible to put it in the indicative.
This entire phenomenon regarding Singaporeans' treatment of "would" is interesting as well as annoying. I do note that for example, that I pronounce "would" with an /l/ in it at times. Although the consonant doesn't generally appear audibly (as a lateral approximant in a cluster it tends to get elided most of the time in quick speech), it appears when words are stressed and also when I am talking in a low voice (like in a library). This is mainly because most of my normal vocabulary comes from reading in second, third, fourth and fifth grade, from age 7 to 10: and I tended to apply stress distinctions for words that were homophones for Americans. For example "night" is a fairly stressed vowel, and I attributed this to the "-ight", and "nite" didn't quite seem to carry the same stress. I perceived "would" to have an /l/ in this regard, but I was never corrected, probably because it wasn't noticeable enough in my speech. So you see, even though I have an American accent I do not think like the average American English speaker!
My conclusion? Words that are picked up from reading rather than acquired in speech I consider to be "literary" or "non-native" vocabulary - I encountered "would" in the classroom naturally, but apparently the reading perception with the /l/ superseded the /l/-less classroom pronunciation of "would". (This was also aided by the fact that I first read Green Eggs and Ham by myself silently, as I suspect that's when I first encountered "would" -- would you like them with a goat? would you eat them in a boat? -- rather than having it read to me.) The fact that "would" is thus a "non-native" word for me means that I didn't encounter "would" too much in Singapore, or at least not enough by the age of five, for it to have entered my native vocabulary. My Singlish heritage is interesting: because of it, I can both say that I am both a native speaker and not a native speaker of English.
If it wasn't part of my early childhood linguistic environment in Singapore, I expect it wasn't part of many other Singaporeans' early childhood linguistic environments too. Apparently, "would", with all of its optatives, conditionals and aorists, didn't become part of many Singaporeans' English grammar structures until much later in life: a late acquisition of the concept would undermine fluency and natural grasping of the concept. It is thus not surprising that many Singaporeans end up omitting it in speech.
Grammarians lament that the English subjunctive is facing demise. Despite this, I think the subjunctive survives quite well in the modal auxiliaries would and should as well as in periphrastic constructions. English, is after all, an analytic language: sentences are most oftenly composed of free morphemes - words that are not bound to other words as suffixes or verb endings. It's only natural to move from an inflected form of the subjunctive to one conveyed with modal auxiliary verbs, just like we have done with the future tense.
But to drop "would" entirely, well, it would result in the loss of too many convenient constructions of delicate moods, wants, hypotheses and declarations. So let's not lose it.
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