[ඉංගිරිසි Ingirisi Google Group] Pandas and glaciers

[Thameera Senanayaka]

I recently tweeted the following sentence:

When this train reaches gampaha, pandas would have been extinct and all glaciers melted

I just wanted to say how slow that train was. As you may understand, this should have translated into sinhala like "පැන්ඩලා වඳ වෙලා තියේවි"

But not certain if my grammar was right here. Any ideas?

--

http://twitter.com/thameera
http://thameeragetheeraya.blogspot.com

[Thameera Senanayaka]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Thameera Senanayaka <thame...@gmail.com> wrote:

I recently tweeted the following sentence:

When this train reaches gampaha, pandas would have been extinct and all glaciers melted

I just wanted to say how slow that train was. As you may understand, this should have translated into sinhala like "පැන්ඩලා වඳ වෙලා තියේවි"

But not certain if my grammar was right here. Any ideas?

 One more thing, I realised that "When" should better have been replaced by "By the time"

[Sujeewa de Silva]

I would have said, "By the time this train reached Gampaha, pandas
would be extinct and all glaciers would have melted."

The verb "reached" here is in the subjunctive mood, which is used when
you talk about imaginary scenarios like this. However, many English
speakers today would use the present tense "reaches" instead - as you
did - because the subjunctive has become less common in modern
informal English usage.

In the second part, I'd prefer "would be extinct" to "would have been
extinct", because I see it as a situation that should prevail by then
(where there would be no more pandas) rather than an event that should
take place (pandas becoming extinct). In the case of glaciers, on the
other hand, it's the action of melting that carries the weight, and
therefore has to be treated as such.

On Apr 23, 9:30 am, Thameera Senanayaka <thameera...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Thameera Senanayaka

> <thameera...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> > I recently tweeted the following sentence:
>
> > When this train reaches gampaha, pandas would have been extinct and all
> > glaciers melted
>
> > I just wanted to say how slow that train was. As you may understand, this

> > should have translated into sinhala like "පැන්ඩලා වඳ *වෙලා තියේවි*"

> > But not certain if my grammar was right here. Any ideas?
>
>  One more thing, I realised that "When" should better have been replaced by
> "By the time"
>
> --
>
> http://twitter.com/thameerahttp://thameeragetheeraya.blogspot.com
>

> --
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[Thameera Senanayaka]

Yes, your version seems perfect

Anyway doesn't "reaches" sound more intuitive than "reached"? Don't exactly know what that subjunctive thing is. You'd better put a post in your blog about this ;)

[Sujeewa de Silva]

The reason why it may seem counter-intuitive is that the subjunctive
in English, as I said earlier, is often replaced by the simple present
even by native speakers. Even where it is used, the form used for
imaginary scenarios mostly resembles the simple past form of a verb,
as in "I wish I knew." In other European languages like French,German
and Italian, it is quite distinctive.

I have already described the usage of the subjunctive mood to some
extent in two articles on my blog:
I Wish I knew! - මේ අතීත කාලයද?
(http://ingirisi.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-wish-i-knew.html)
If You Went to the Moon… - "if" සහිත වැකි ගැන
(http://ingirisi.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-you-went-to-moon-if.html)

You can find more info about it in the Wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive

On Apr 23, 12:44 pm, Thameera Senanayaka <thameera...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yes, your version seems perfect
>
> Anyway doesn't "reaches" sound more intuitive than "reached"? Don't exactly
> know what that subjunctive thing is. You'd better put a post in your blog
> about this ;)
>

[Thameera Senanayaka]

Ah, missed that. Will refer to them, thanks!