I think it's interesting that in English to signal that something is not fact you often use past tense, even though it has nothing to do with being backwards in time. It's just used because the present moment is "more real" and the past is further removed from the real. Have you even thought about this?So you can say for example "if I had a million dollars". Notice "had" is past tense of "have" but this is not because it's in the past, it's because it's not fact, you don't actually have a million dollars, you're just thinking about it, hypothesizing, talking about something unreal, and the past is not as real as the present moment.I find this very interesting because some philosophies, spiritual traditions etc talk about how the present moment is the only thing that's real. So it makes you wonder if this is a vestige in the grammar from a time when people had a different conception of time.
That's actually called the conditional tense. It makes sense to use the past tense in that part because you'd have to have already had whatever you had (i.e. in the past) in order to fulfil the condition. e.g. "If I (already, before now) had a million dollars, I would buy a house (right now)."
>>25336650No, I think you're wrong. Notice "would" is also past tense for the same reason I mentioned, to indicate non-fact, present tense is "will". It's not that one of these is before the other in time.
>>25336546>Notice "had" is past tense of "have" but this is not because it's in the past, it's because it's not fact, you don't actually have a million dollars, you're just thinking about it, hypothesizing, talking about something unreal, and the past is not as real as the present moment.Yes. The past is just used to suggest distance. Distance from the present feels similar to distance from the real. It's sometimes called the "fake past" or "unreal past".>I find this very interesting because some philosophies, spiritual traditions etc talk about how the present moment is the only thing that's real. So it makes you wonder if this is a vestige in the grammar from a time when people had a different conception of time.Well, vaguely perhaps, but I don't think there's that much in it.
It's called the fake past tense and it's surprisingly common cross-linguistically. There are various theories as to why.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional#The_grammar_of_counterfactuality
>>25336546ITT: babby's first subjunctive
>OP doesn’t know what subjunctive mood is. Right above this thread everyone’s talking about the literacy crisis. Good thing /lit/ users are above all that rigmoral
>>25336546Even if that were true, it isn't now.
>>25338231>>25338237>t. retards
