A friend and I were texting politics a couple days ago and I wrote, "It would be funny if it weren't so serious." His reply was, "Is it weren't or wasn't? Serious question from the grammarly challenged." (Aside: he's not grammarly challenged.)
I knew that "weren't" was the correct term, and I remember learning back in high school that the reason had "something to do with the negative, or not being real, or something". I texted a couple of my school's English teachers.
I eventually got word that it had to do with the future perfect tense. I broke out my Random House Handbook, which I probably hadn't opened since leaving college in 1987, and looked up "future perfect". As I read the examples, I didn't see anything about "weren't" being used as I used it.
Until I got to the bottom of the page. The subjunctive mood.
When should the subjunctive be used? Although at one time it was a flourishing part of daily usage, the subjunctive now survives only in limited kinds of statements...
Several examples are given, but this subjunctive mood is never clearly defined! However, one of the limited kinds of statements is "impossible or unlikely conditions"--I guess that's my "negative, or not being real, or something". The example given:
If I were on the moon now, I would tidy up the junk that has been strewn there.
I'm sure my high school English teachers would be proud that I retained even a sliver of that knowledge all these decades later. That puts me in a good mood.
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