Commonwealth English (question for Canadian, Australian posters & so on)

[Mr. Smith]

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

Eh, subjunctive is a rather annoying tense anyway. It seems to be one of the few cases where American English takes the more esoteric rather than simplistic option.

[Lechasseur]

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

What’s an example of the subjunctive tense in English ?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

What’s an example of the subjunctive tense in English ?

If I were a rich man ...

More seriously, one reason that the subjunctive is often avoided is that it is rarely distinctive from the indicative. With regular verbs, the only difference is in the third person singular present, "he sing" instead of "he sings". The irregular verb "to be" is the one where the subjunctive is most distinctive, where the bare "be" is the subjunctive in all persons and numbers of the present tense and "were" is the subjunctive in all persons and numbers of the past tense.

[Geoffrey Howe]

The subjunctive is not a tense.

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

True to an extent, though I'd note that you are more likely to see the subjunctive mood expressed with "should" as in "he thought it important that they should return."

[Mr. Smith]

The subjunctive is not a tense.

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

Not in English anyway.

True to an extent, though I'd note that you are more likely to see the subjunctive mood expressed with "should" as in "he thought it important that they should return."

[Хahar 🤔]

The primary grammatical difference I observe between American and British English is that British writers seem to be allergic to the subjunctive and will go to great (and, to an American eye, often ungrammatical) lengths to avoid using it.

Eh, subjunctive is a rather annoying tense anyway. It seems to be one of the few cases where American English takes the more esoteric rather than simplistic option.

I'm not sure why it was removed, but the Wikipedia article on the English subjunctive used to have a list of British sentences that avoided the plain English subjunctive:

1. Marjorie had insisted that Barbara spent the morning resting in her stateroom. As it was grey outside and the wind was markedly cooler, she was not deprived too much. [Peter Lovesey, The False Inspector Dew, 1982, p. 200]
2. Vivian wept as she felt so helpless to do anything for her little baby. She asked John to call Father O'Brien to baptize little Caroline and insisted that he went home to rest. [Mary Jo Stanley, Boxed Secrets, 2011, p. 194]
3. He worked in an optical business off Baker Street, and I suggested that he studied lenses and optics, and got him into night school. [Leslie Thompson, Jeffrey P. Green, Leslie Thompson, an Autobiography, 1985, p. 143]
4. Undaunted by mere appearances, Thornton proposed that he underwent an immediate tracheostomy and that he should be warmed by gentle massage and washing and be transfused with fresh lamb's blood! [Transactions of the Medical Society of London, 2000, Vol. 117, p. 6 ]
5. They were insistent that he checked it out. He was exhausted and right now all he wanted to do was to take his tired ass home and get some sleep. [Bernard L. Jr. Satterwhite, Playaz and Wolves, 2009, p. 139]
6. That's odd, because originally it was John who was adamant that we brought in a keyboard player. [Hugh Cornwell, Jim Dury, The Stranglers: Song by Song, 2002, p. 292]

In example 1, many American speakers, after reading the second sentence, will be jarred into thinking the indicative spent in the first sentence is a mistake for the subjunctive spend, because the second sentence makes it clear that insist was used as a directive and not a statement. Examples 2 and 3 may similarly perplex some readers: context suggests the verbs are directives, which clashes with the indicative mood the authors use. Example 4 is a curious mix of both British alternatives to the subjunctive: the indicative (underwent) and the modal (should be warmed… be transfused). Examples 5 and 6 show that some non-verbal constructions can have similar mandative force. American versions of the above examples would use the subjunctive: (1) spend; (2) go; (3) study; (4) undergo [and delete should]; (5) check out; (6) bring in.

Every one of these constructions sounds strange and unnatural to an American, and several of them would be interpreted by any literate American to have a plain indicative meaning rather than the intended meaning. This abhorrence of the subjunctive is particularly curious to me because the subjunctive mood is not some moribund optional usage in this country; it is the only correct form in America, and all of the British examples listed would be unambiguously incorrect here. Obviously the subjunctive is less common in speech, since non-finite constructions involving an infinitive are more common, but even in casual speech it would never be acceptable in America to say "I suggested that he went" to convey the same meaning that "I suggested that he go" has; far from being esoteric the subjunctive is indispensable.