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michèle 2 Feb 7th, 2007 01:28 pm

Hope + present for future
 
:rain: I hope your wishes come true.
I'm just wondering whether I could use "will" in this sentence instead of present simple.
I hope your wishes will come true.
One of my student asked the question.
On the other hand, her teacher wrote : I hope your wishes came true. Is it possible to use a past simple to express future wishes .
Wish + past simple and wish + past perfect express regret, doesn't it?:doh:

Thanks for your help

michèle 2 Feb 8th, 2007 02:08 am

Re: Hope + present for future
 
If I say : I wish your dreams came true. It means that I regret that they don't come true doesn't it ? and it doesn't express hope for the future ?
Thanks for your help.:confused:

susan53 Feb 8th, 2007 03:02 am

Re: Hope + present for future
 
Quote:

Quote michèle 2
:rain: I hope your wishes come true.
I'm just wondering whether I could use "will" in this sentence instead of present simple.

Yes you can. The use of the first form comes just presents the action as a future event, whereas here will is making a prediction about the willingness of the person to come (remember the post about the uses of will and going to?). If you say I hope .. then you're making a prediction, so will is fine. So :
I hope he comes(in the future) or I hope he will come = I hope he agrees/will agree to come

But not came. I hope ... is seen as introducing a real prediction, so you need a first form verb (I'd avoid terms like present/past to describe verbs because they have no real meaning in terms of the English verb system, as these examples show. It's simpler to use first form - come/will/can etc and second form -came/would/could etc)

One use of the second form (came/would/could) is, as you say, to express hypothetical present events (I'm using present here to describe the time of the event not the verb). But when we're speaking hypothetically we switch to I wish ...

So to make a hypothetical prediction and/or to talk about hypothetical willingness, I hope becomes I wish and will (first form) becomes would(second form):
I wish he would come.

But it gets tricky. I wish he came... does not refer to a hypothetical future event. It's referring to a hypothetical habitual event (remember the first form can express real habitual events - he comes here often- so automatically the second form can express hypothetical habitual events) Here the real situation is he doesn't come very often so the hypothetical situation is I wish he came more often.

I hope that clarifies/will clarify the situation :D

michèle 2 Feb 8th, 2007 03:53 am

Re: Hope + present for future
 
Thanks a lot , Susan.

hueso381 Apr 2nd, 2009 01:58 am

Re: Hope + present for future
 
That is a great explanation.

greggy83 Oct 13th, 2011 11:59 pm

Re: Hope + present for future
 
I don't completely agree with Susan53.

I think the use of 'I hope [that] it will happen' is a casual and ungrammatical structure; the more appropriate and fail-proof sentence would be 'I hope [that] it happens'. This verb form for 'happens' is a subjunctive from what I understand. I surmise that the key for figuring out whether the subjunctive is used is to see whether 'that' could be written in.

Also, using 'hope' is not a prediction: it's merely a wish or a yearning.


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