Friday, November 20, 2015

conditionals - Simple past vs. past subjunctive in 'if' clauses

I understand the usage of the past subjunctive but I'm confused whether I should use it in these kind of cases, because it sounds so stilted when I say it:




'If I [had/were to have] money, I'd go to the shops'



'If we really [wanted/were to want] to, we could go'




As far as I know we should use the second option in both these cases because it is a past subjunctive+conditional clause, but they just sound wrong. I feel this is similar to:





If we [fell/were to fall] down the hill, we'd have a hard time getting back up'




In this case it feels like the 2nd one is right, and doesn't sounds stilted at all. Are both options acceptable?

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