Sometimes, what might have been never stops mattering. By Jean Chen Ho I’ve always had an unstable relationship to time. Maybe that’s because in Chinese, my first language, verbs aren’t conjugated.

For grammar bullies “the subjunctive” is sacred ground. Reforms proposed for the British national curriculum in 2012 required teaching use of the subjunctive not later than sixth grade. People seem to ...

AT Language Log Mark Liberman notes that Nicolas Sarkozy has made headlines for, of all things, using the formal and quite rare imperfect subjunctive in a televised interview. "J'aurais aimé qu'il ...