Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

You chose the right answer (A).

There's a logical principle involved here, so you no longer have to
fear worrying about such things. In conditional sentences of this
type, it's necessary for the main verb in both clauses to be in the
same tense.

A is the right answer. You may want to look at this site:
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Present Unreal Conditional

EXCEPTION   If I were ...
In the Present Unreal Conditional, the form "was" is not considered
grammatically correct. In written English or in testing situations,
you should always use "were." However, in everyday conversation, "was"
is often used.

EXAMPLES:

If he were French, he would live in Paris.

http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/presentconditional.html#presentunreal
----

Marius Hancu

Verbs in English have many qualities that define correspondingly many
of their ways of being used.

One of those qualities is called--perhaps confusingly--"mood".  English
has three moods: the indicative, for ordinary statements about things
that are; the imperative, for commands and requests; and the
subjunctive for (to present it in detail) representing something as not
actually belonging to the domain of fact or reality, but as merely
existent in the mind of the speaker as a desire, wish, volition, plan,
conception, or thought--in other words, for what is not (as it is in
the indicative) a statement about something that really is.

A very common marker that the subjunctive mood is wanted is the
appearance of the word "if" before a proposition, marking that
proposition as "merely existent in the mind of the speaker . . . as a
conception or thought", as opposed to being something that definitely
exists.

The subjunctive mood of verbs can be marked in two ways: the older,
which is a verb form that may be (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't)
different from the ordinary indicative form, or the new way, which is
by the use of certain "modal auxiliary" words (such as "can" or "may").

The commonest verb of all, "be", has a subjunctive form that is quite
simple: in the present tense, it is "be" for all persons ("If I be but
a fool", "if she be truly in pain", "if we be in danger"); in the past
tense, it is "were" for all persons ("if I were king", "if he were my
supervisor", "if you were a true friend").

An important and sometimes confusing point about the subjunctive is
that tenses in the subjunctive mood do not have the same function as in
the much more common indicative mood.  In particular, the past
subjunctive usually points to the temporal present or future; the chief
distinction is that the past subjunctive indicates more doubt or
uncertainty than does the present subjunctive:

"He may yet arrive tonight."  =  I think it reasonably possible.
"He might yet arrive tonight."  =  It's not impossible, but I doubt it.

One hopes that from this you can correctly perceive that the past
subjunctive "were" (A) is the correct choice.

A or C.

Can I actually say: "what, if you (were to) meet with bad weather?" ??

thanks

Since no one else pointed this out, you should have written "had"
instead of "have."  That sentence calls for the past tense.

--Jeff