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I have never heard it explained. I knew that If I was was correct in certain circumstances but I would have been unable to explain it until I read your link. It sounds quite logical to me. I don't think, "If I were rude I'll make it up to you" sounds right at all.
After thinking about this a bit, I wonder if past and future may have something to do with which you use. It doesn't sound right to me if I said, "If I were a rich man last week, I would have given all my friends a hundred dollar bill," even though the whole idea is fantasy. Maybe it's my ear.
But my answer to your question is yes, in certain circumstances.
If you might entertain the idea of 'purely hypothetical' - when you say "If I'd been a rich man last week …" you are implying a truth: was not rich. So that's not a pure hypothesis.
On the other hand , 'If I were rich...' is meant to imply or divulge nothing- it's pure.
I think that 'if I'd been...' and 'If I was ...' are same, but both sort of half-subjunctive, not all the way.
katma said
But Dick, wouldn't that be "If I'd been a rich man last week ..."?
I thought about that before I made the post but, like Robert, I think "If I had been" and "If I was" express the same idea. "If I were a rich man last week," sounds wrong to me. I can not say without doubt that it is incorrect but it sounds wrong.
AmyPonders said
Katma is right: “If I were a rich man last week” is past tense, so you could also correctly say "If I was a rich man last week," though Katma's solution is more elegant.
This is hypothetical, so the subjunctive is called for, rather than the indicative. There is no past tense subjective. Present is "I be" and "I have been", imperfect is "I were", and pluperfect is "I had been".
AmyPonders said
But “If I were a rich man” right now is a present tense hypothetical, technically called a subjunctive.
Wouldn't the conditional (present tense "I would be" and perfect "I would have been") be still more correct?
But having learnt English from a spinster who rapped knuckles with a ruler (and she was a Presbyterian in public school, not a nun in parochial schools), I hate conjugation nazis. I think the reason "If I were" sounds wrong to Dick is that the indicative form (that is, without the "if") uses was for first- and third-person singular, reserving were for plural and for second-person. And like Katma, I'd normally use "“If I’d been" (or 'Iffen I wuz").
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