Estaba v Estuveria
I wanted to say..."If I was in England..." and used the imperfect tense of "estar" = estaba, however, my translation was corrected from "Si yo estaba..." to "Si yo estuveria" Why do I need to use the imperfect subjunctive in this example? Help please!!
3 Answers
Estaba implies that you actually were in England and you're stating a fact. If you want to say e.g. "I was in England when X happened", you would use estaba.
Estuviera is used when you talk about things that didn't actually occur, like in your case - if you were but you weren't. You're describing something which didn't happen = not a fact, and therefore you need to use the subjunctive. Ian is right that clauses with "IF" take the subjunctive precisely because you don't talk about facts when you use "if".
Also, notice the spelling of the imperfect subjunctive of estar - I checked it in the conjugation tables in order to be sure, and it is estuviera, not estuveria.
The grammatically correct English is:
If I were in England. (the past tense "were" indicates that you are not in England)
But this is slowly being ignored.
Basically you need the subjunctive because you started the question with IF.
Update
The verb "to be" is the only verb that is changed (was to were in this case) in English for the subjunctive. (that is a simplifaction but .........)
Spanish changes all of them - as far as I know.
English uses some of the Modals instead.
Still not sure I understand, but thank you for taking the time to respond. Incidentally, I was not in England as I live in Spain.
