If I were/was... (which one is correct?)

One should say ''what if God WERE one of us''

You should have told Joan Osbourne before she made the uber-popular "One of Us" with the chorus being "What if God Was One of Us"

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/brucealmighty/oneofus.htm

Ok, 'grammareader'. That statement was pointless because outside of the Oxford Dictionary, it correctly is 'what is God WAS one of us".

"What if God was one of us?" sounds normal. "What if God were one of us?" sounds stuffy. "If I was you" sounds wrong, though.

So you are not being very consistent?!

IF I WERE YOU sounds bookish

To 2 Someone:
How is Someone not being consistent?

Rule...

if + subject + SUBJUNCTIVE(=were) .....// would


If I were you, I would do it
If God were one of us, he would do it


(IF I WERE (subjunctive)
IF GOD WERE (subjunctive))

''Someone'' claims IF I WERE is the correct form, but (WHAT) IF GOD WAS ONE OF US is correct as well.

According to normative grammar both IF I WAS and IF GOD WAS are to be considered incorrect since the form used (indicative) is not appropriate. SUBJUNCTIVE is too be used in both cases (If I were, What if God were...)

So,

Normative Grammar:

If I were you (correct)
If I was you (incorrect)

If God were one of us (correct)
If God was one of us (incorrect)


Descriptive Grammar:


If I were you (formal)
If I was you (informal)

If God were one of us (formal)
If God was one of us (informal)


The user ''Someone'' is somewhat confused mixing formal and informal usage...(Nonetheless, remember that usage labeling is a difficult thing since IT IS I is can be perfectly informal in Boston aristocracy speech, but very formal in Valley Girl dialect...)

Subjuctive is to be used

subjunctive

please give us the edit button

You do not know how many times I've wished the same thing!

Anyway, I think Someone and I have similar views. None of what we say is taken off some grammar book. It is just how we speak. We say "If I were" and nothing else. We also say "If God was". That's just the way it is.

I am not confused. I am quite aware of when to use the subjunctive and when not to according to prescriptive grammar. You, however, seem to be confused about what is correct in descriptive grammar. "If I were you" is more of a set phrase, and is far more common than "If I was you", even among people who prefer not to use a distinctive subjunctive form under other circumstances.

2 Someone - 'If I were you' and 'If God was one of us' is correct because 'I' becomes 'you' and 'God' becomes 'one of us'. You would say 'you were' and 'one of us was' so the two phrases are correct.

American nic is wrong.

A Surprising Grammatical Controversy

A few years ago a heated debate erupted in an online discussion group regarding the Pet Shop Boys' use of the line "If I was you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do" in the song "I'm Not Scared." It started when a fan pointed out that, technically, it was bad grammar—that it should be "If I were you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do." Another fan responded that the original line was grammatically correct as is. After all, you'd say, "I was his friend," so why wouldn't you say, "If I was you"? Battle lines were drawn as more and more fans entered the fray.

Several common stances emerged. First was the group that insisted that "If I was you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do" was indeed incorrect grammatically, but that Neil must have surely known this and used bad grammar for a reason; the puzzle, therefore, lay in figuring out that reason. Another viewpoint agreed that it was bad grammar but that Neil probably didn't have any particular reason for it—that he, being after all a fallible human being, simply made a mistake. A third group maintained that "If I was you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do" was totally correct as is.

This debate—sometimes descending to the level of flame-throwing—continued for more than a week, but finally wound down and ended when it became clear that nobody was going to convince anybody with an opposing viewpoing that he or she was incorrect.

So now, long after the dust has settled, we're left with the question: Just what is the truth?

First there's the fundamental question about grammar. As it turns out, the answer isn't such a simple one. In traditional English grammar, the verb in the opening conditional clause of the sentence "If I [was or were] you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do" should be in the subjunctive mood. You see, verbs in English can be in one of three "moods": indicative, imperative, or subjunctive. The indicative mood, which is used for statements of fact, is by far the most common. The imperative mood is used to express commands. And the subjunctive mood is used to express conditions contrary to fact or to express a wish.

Anyone who has studied such languages as French and Spanish is well acquainted with the fact that most verbs are heavily inflected and conjugate differently depending on their mood. Hundreds of years ago—before the time of Geoffrey Chaucer—this was also the case in English. But through the history of the language, English verbs came to lose most of their inflections, particularly regarding mood. Today very few English verbs conjugate differently in the subjunctive mood than they do in the indicative mood. Thus English speakers are largely unaware of any distinction in mood at all. In effect, the subjunctive mood itself has been dying out in English.

But the verb "to be" is something of an anomaly in English. It's a well-known pattern in linguistics that the most commonly used verbs are the ones that tend to retain the most complex inflections. That is, because they're so often used, people can learn their complex inflections through sheer force of habit. Therefore the single most commonly used verb, "to be," has retained the single most complex set of inflections in the English language: "be," "am," "is," "are," "was," "were," "been," and "being" are all inflections of "to be."

And, sure enough, "to be" is one of the very few verbs in English to retain, in traditional grammar, a distinction between the indicative and subjunctive versions of the verb. In "mandative" situations, the typical subjunctive form of "to be" is "be," as in the sentence, "If that be the case, then I don't want to go." In "hypothetical" situations, the typical subjunctive form of "to be" is "were": "If he were my brother, I'd ask him not to go." Note that, unlike the indicative mood, in which the verb conjugates differently depending on the person and number of the verb (I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are; I was, you were, he/she/it is, we were, they were), in the subjunctive mood the verb doesn't conjugate differently; it only changes depending on the mandative/hypothetical distinction (I/you/he/she/it/we/they be; I/you/he/she/it/we/they were).

So, from the perspective of traditional grammar, "If I was you, I wouldn't treat me the way you do" is absolutely incorrect. It should be "If I were you...." In fact, some really good examples of the correct subjunctive can be found right in the PSB catalogue, as in their remake of the Noël Coward song "If Love Were All."

That's traditional grammar. But language is a living, changing thing. And the subjunctive mood continues its process of slowly dying out in English. In an ever-increasingly large part of the English-speaking world, the nuances of the subjunctive mood are being lost, and such phrasings as "If that be the case..." and "If I were you..." sound increasingly archaic.

An interesting phenomenon that has long been observed in linguistics—one that seems contrary to expectations—is that the language of "native" populations tends to change more rapidly than that of "immigrant" populations. That is, if a group of people move away from their native land, they and their descendants tend to cling more tenaciously to their language structures than do the people they left behind. This is especially true for isolated populations of immigrants. For example, linguists believe that the language spoken by natives of the Appalachian regions of the United States more closely resembles Elizabethan English than the language spoken in most of Great Britain today. In other words, when the living William Shakespeare spoke aloud 400 years ago, he probably sounded more like Jed Clampett than Prince Charles.

So could it be that the subjunctive mood is being retained in the United States a bit more tenanciously than in the United Kingdom? Could folks in the U.K. be abandoning the subjunctive more quickly than their American cousins? If that be the case (I couldn't resist), the traditionally "incorrect" phrasing "If I was you..." is actually "more correct" for Neil than it would be for, say, Bruce Springsteen. I suppose only a British linguist could answer that question for sure.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that "If I was you..." is just as "incorrect" in Britain as it is in the United States. In that case, I believe we have two possibilities: (1) Neil is (or at least was at the time) simply ignorant of the subjunctive distinction; or (2) Neil is aware of the distinction but for very conscious artistic reasons decided to use "incorrect" grammar.

I doubt the first possibility. Neil, after all, is rather well educated. And while, heaven knows, well educated people certainly make mistakes, grammatical and otherwise (hey, tell me about it!), somehow this doesn't strike me as one of them.

The second possibility seems far more likely. Popular music is replete with examples of songwriters knowingly using "bad" grammar for a variety of reasons. I mean, I wouldn't even think of trying to count the number of times "ain't" has been used in popular music. Sometimes "bad" grammar is used for the sake of the "poetry" or the flow of the language; sometimes it simply sounds better, especially when you consider the special metrical and inflective requirements of song lyrics. That is, what wording fits the rhythm and melody best? In other cases, "bad" grammar is consistent with the lyrical persona. If the fictive narrator of a lyric is the kind of person who would normally use "bad" grammar, then it makes perfect sense for the lyric to use "bad" grammar as well. In still other cases, such as in certain examples of "folk" music, the use of "bad" grammar actually makes a sociopolitical statement—an expression of solidarity with the "common people" who presumably talk that way.

So what do I think is going on with "If I was you..."? Well, I'd really like to hear from that British linguist. Until then, I'll give Neil the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it was indeed intentional. Perhaps Neil tried singing "If I were you..." and he and/or Chris simply didn't like the sound of it. After all, music is about sound more than anything else. So they decided to go with the "bad" grammar. You can do that sort of thing, you know, when you're creating art.

And this doesn't even get into one of their songs for Liza, "If There Was Love." Shouldn't that be "If There Were Love"?

Oh, let's just drop it, shall we?