Second Conditional

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Wiktor - 02 Jun 2006 11:01 GMT

I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the
movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han Solo and his company with the words,
'We would be honoured if you would join us'. It is certainly not a pure
second conditional and what I would like to find out is if it is common
or at least acceptable to say it this way, say, in an informal or
whatever speech for an average native speaker. Do you use this
construction with 'would' after 'if' at all in your everyday English? I
must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in
Polish language.

Kind regards,

Wiktor

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Einde O'Callaghan - 02 Jun 2006 12:06 GMT

> I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the
> movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han Solo and his company with the words,
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in
> Polish language.

It is a particularly polite way wy of inviting somebody to do something.
It is only used in this sort of context. Otherwise we use the past tense
in the "if2 clause (actually a conjunctive, but there is no difference
in form between the past simple and the [past or second] conjunctive
except for the verb "to be").

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

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SherLok Merfy - 16 Jun 2006 09:05 GMT

> I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the
> movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han Solo and his company with the words,
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> whatever speech for an average native speaker. Do you use this
> construction with 'would' after 'if' at all in your everyday English?

According to my grammar checker, in formal English, that would be: "If
you would join us, then we would be honoured.", so that the grammar
checker doesn't want "then" in the first construction.

> I must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in
> Polish language.

I haven't noticed a preference for either order of clauses in English.
I imajin that Polish also allows for the clause to become a verb
phrase, as in:
"You joining us would honour us."

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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / June 2006

Second Conditional