conditional sentences and wishes

When I was in school, they taught this as the "conditional subjunctive"...although that was later changed to "subjective" and "conditional."

When I was in school the teacher would insist that the sentence be phrased, "I wish Sarah were here now."

Modern thought seems to have moved away from such a strict grammar...and would say that "I wish Sarah was here now" or "I wish Sarah would be here now"...are both acceptable...although I suspect some purists would argue that those two sentences express subtly different ideas.

If I were writing the sentence I would use, "I wish Sarah were here now."

Some people might disagree strongly with me on this...so I think you will not get a definitive answer on this.

Dear Frank Apisa,

I really appreciate you for your reply! And again thanks!
Let's see, how the other members will answer my question.

Neither is correct. We use "I wish...that...were" and "I wish ...that...would" about the present or immediate future:

I wish that Sarah were here (Sarah is not here)
I wish that the sun would shine (it is not shining)

I wish that Sarah would come (now or very soon)
I wish that the sun would shine (now or very soon)

For the more distant future we would use "hope...that" when we do not know whether something will happen or not but we want it to happen:

I hope that the weather is nice tomorrow/next week/when I am in Spain next June
I hope that Sarah comes tomorrow
I hope that the sun shines tomorrow
I hope that Jane comes to see me later.

In casual conversation 'that' is often omitted.

First of all, let me thank you for your help. Why "I wish Sarah were here now" is correct, but why "I wish the weather were nice tomorrow" would be incorrect?
You mean, we can never talk about tomorrow's weather using "wish clause" in English grammar?

Because we use wish clauses about the past, present or future, about things that are known, that we wish were otherwise: Sarah was not here yesterday (I wish she had been); Sarah is not here today (I wish she were); Sarah won't be here tomorrow (I wish she was going to be).


That is correct. We do not know for certain what tomorrow's weather will be. We can say "I wish it wasn't Monday tomorrow", but only "I hope it won't rain tomorrow".

Finally, I got your explanation, but I admit that "wish clause" turned out to be a little bit confusing for me. Thanks so much for sharing your English with me.