conditional vs subjunctive

[ich]

Hi everyone,

I am an teacher aide in an English class and we came upon a question on the students' homework. They were to tell whether a sentence is in indicative, subjective, conditional, etc.

There was a class debate over the subordinate clause in this one: Wish, I could be part of your world.

Half was saying it is subjunctive and the other half says it is conditional.

I think it is conditional but the Spanish student I am helping would translate the sentence using subjunctive. I was wondering which one is correct and why.

Thanks in advance.

[Bubulus]

Hi everyone,

I am an teacher aide in an English class and we came upon a question on the students' homework. They were to tell whether a sentence is in indicative, subjective, conditional, etc.

There was a class debate over the subordinate clause in this one: Wish, I could be part of your world.

Half was saying it is subjunctive and the other half says it is conditional.

I think it is conditional but the Spanish student I am helping would translate the sentence using subjunctive. I was wondering which one is correct and why.

Thanks in advance.

Uh, how is this question or skill useful for a student of English? Especially with regard to identifying the "conditional mood", since English doesn't have a morphological one. Seems quite silly to me. Actually, you're not even talking about specific verbs, you're talking about whether a "sentence" is in a certain mood. That sounds outright misguided to me, but oh well...

At any rate, as far as Spanish goes, yes, the normal way to say this would be with an imperfect subjunctive for "wish" and infinitives for "could" and "be":

Quisiera poder ser parte de tu mundo.
want.IMPF.SUBJ.1S can.INF be.INF part of your world
lit., "I wish to be able to be part of your world."

This also applies to Latin, where "I wish" would be rendered by an adverb, "could" would be in the imperfect subjunctive, and "be" in the infinitive:

Utinam pars vitae tuae esse possem.
would.that part.NOM.SG life.GEN.SG your.GEN.SG be.PRES.INF can.IMPF.SUBJ.1S
lit., "Would that I were able to be part of your life."

[Dormouse559]

Hi everyone,

I am an teacher aide in an English class and we came upon a question on the students' homework. They were to tell whether a sentence is in indicative, subjective, conditional, etc.

There was a class debate over the subordinate clause in this one: Wish, I could be part of your world.

Half was saying it is subjunctive and the other half says it is conditional.

I think it is conditional but the Spanish student I am helping would translate the sentence using subjunctive. I was wondering which one is correct and why.

Thanks in advance.

Since "can" can often be replaced with "be able to", I did so and got "Wish I were able to be part of your world", in which "were" is subjunctive. To me that suggests "could" is also subjunctive in this context. On a side note, that comma after "wish" looks so German; it took me second to recognize the sentence because of it.