If 'were' were a has-been

Newspapers are principally about communicating content, so we tend to overlook the specifics of their form.  For example, British broadsheet newspapers are made up of a dense patch-work of quotations, strung together with interconnecting phrases of explanation.  Seen under this rubric, they have the texture of a novel or a play, with a roster of rapidly-sketched characters who enter, have their say, and then leave.

Contrast this with a heavyweight German newspaper like the Süddeutsche Zeitung or the Frankfurter Zeitung.  There you will find far fewer direct quotations, and far fewer characters who introduce themselves; instead the texture is nearer to that of learned essay, with supporting citations reported as indirect speech - that is 'The minister said that he is in good health' rather than 'The minister said: "I am in good health." 

There is an interesting consequence of this approach. With indirect speech, German uses the subjunctive tense rather than the indicative.  In the example above, what would actually be written is 'The minister said that he be in good health' - where 'be' is the subjunctive form of 'is'.  The subjunctive is generally used in Western languages to indicate states of doubt, fearing, hoping and such like as in 'I wish that he were here.' 

So to read a heavyweight German newspaper is, because of the constant subjunctive state of the writing, to enter a twilight world of scepticism, where many things may be, but where nothing is absolutely certain - a neat expression of the inherent caution of good journalism.  It is something that equally rigorous writers in English must convey with clumsy phrases such as 'it is claimed' or 'allegedly." 

In German, the main use of the subjunctive is to convey indirect speech in this way.  The romance languages are richer.  Both French and Italian allow themselves to be far more susceptible to their emotions, and show it with their words.  When wishing or hoping or fearing the subjunctive is frequently used by them to convey what an uncertain world we live in.  But this is nothing in comparison to the Spanish language, which seems to live in a constant tremble of doubt about the solidity of facts and opinions.  Reading a paper like El País is to be borne on a mighty current subject to a constant ebb and flow of indicatives and subjunctives. 

Even the Spanish grammatical structure pales into insignificance compared with the ancient languages that have come down to us.  Latin and Greek use the different moods of verbs to introduce the finest linguistic gradations and distinctions into their prose and poetry.  It is almost as if down the centuries our perceptual and conceptual response to the world has coarsened and dulled, just as our ears gradually lose the ability to hear high frequencies as we grow older.  This is nowhere more true than for English.  Where a distinct subjunctive exists as in 'I was' and 'I were - it is now usually ignored.  To say 'If I were in London' means that now you are not, but are thinking about what would happen were; 'if I was in London' means that you are thinking about what actually used to happen when you were there.  To confuse them is to lose the ability to say something clearly, and hence even to think it clearly.  It would be a sad day if 'were' and its ilk were to become a has-been.

(22.2.92)

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