Wishes & Regrets

See you on Wednesday!!!

 

Wednesday 4^th March, 2015

Hi! How’s everything?

I hope you’re enjoying the nice weather on our day! International Women’s Day.

Last Wednesday we talked about wishes & regrets.

 



One way of expressing them is using the expressions ‘I wish’ or ‘If only’

Sometimes the verb tense we use does not coincide with the time. Bear in mind that “tense” isn’t the same as “time”.

Time: present, past or future.

I wish I had Sue’s telephone number. So, I could tell her about the lecture.

“Had” is past simple tense but the time it refers to is present. It refers to a present situation.

·         When Bill and I got married, his attitude to money amused me.

·         If Bill got promoted, our standard of living would go up.

·         I wish we were better off.

·         I was so jealous when I heard about Carol’s weekend in New York.

·         I think it’s time we moved to a bigger house.

·         I’d rather my daughters married a man with money.

·         I wish I’d married my first boyfriend!

·         If I’d married Sean, I would have a better standard of living.

Tenses In bold red really correspond to past time.

Tenses in bold green, use the past but refer to present or future situations.

 Summing up

Use wish + past simple to refer to things we would like to be different in the present or the future (but which are impossible or unlikely)

If only I knew the answer!

I wish I knew the answer.Wish + past perfect, to talk about things which happened and we now regret.

(Instead of ‘wish’ you can use ‘if only’ in exactly the same way. Nevertheless, ‘if only’ is more emphatic).

 If only you hadn’t forgotten the map, we’d be there by now!

After this, we started watching the DVD.

The movie is called ‘In Good Company’. Before actually starting watching the DVD, we read something about the language used.

The plot is about takeovers(when a company buys another company), acquisitions and mergers (conglomerate of companies), as well as globalization. Although the story takes place before the crisis, there is a big number of lay-offs (people who lose their jobs) as the new managers come into the new firms.

The film is a comedy and it starts with Dan Foreman, a middle- aged top advertisement salesman for a leading company. He flies from New York to Los Angeles on business to find a home pregnancy test in the garbage (rubbish). He thinks it belongs to his elder daughter but in fact, it’s his wife who is pregnant. To make his day complete he finds out (discovers) that his company has been bought by a vast media conglomerate and that his new boss is going to be a young man half his age!

 Meanwhile, Carter, his new boss, is desperate for company after his wife left him and he invites himself for dinner at Dan’s house.

I won’t continue, as I don’t want to be a spoiler (a person who tells the end of the movies).

As for the language used, it’s full of abbreviations and ‘business bullshit’ (language of corporations with its clichés and meaningless high sounding phrases and evasions). The use of abbreviations has a double intention. On the one hand it shows the rash of the modern life and the way business is understood. Everything is so fast that there’s no time to speak slowly, with whole sentences. On the other hand, it excludes the people who don’t understand the meaning of those acronyms or abbreviations.

It’s a funny film with a lot of business vocabulary. I hope you like it!

We’ll continue watching it next day. As well as hypothesing about the past and the future…

So, see you next Wednesday!!