Name: 【TEDx】Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive: Phuc Tran at TEDxDirigo
Uploaded: 2014-05-31T03:54:09.000Z
Duration: 14 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I know every line  of the original Star Wars trilogy

was a book about the writing of  Strunk and White's "Elements of style".

I'm here to talk to you about  something kind of geeky,

to talk to you about  the 'gotcha grammar'

of split infinitives  and the misuse of 'whom'.

when grammar is used to belittle other people.

I'm here to talk about  how grammar is a tool

And this all starts with  our understanding of the subjunctive.

I remember talking  to my dad about this,

and because he's  a non-native speaker of English,

he didn't quite grasp  all the nuances of the subjunctive.

you can say: if it hadn't rained,  we would've gone to the beach."

"Why do you wanna talk  about something that didn't happen?"

Here's a quick refresher  for you on the subjunctive:

in English there are  three verbal moods,

there's the indicative,  the subjunctive and the imperative.

The indicative is used  when we view verbal action as factual.

The subjunctive is used when  we view verbal action as non-factual.

The subjunctive comprises  all the nuances of non-fact,

possibility, potentiality  and counterfactuality.

The subjunctive allows us  to look into the future

and to see multiple,  highly-nuanced possibilities

which has a little sprinking  of 'coulds', 'woulds' or 'mights'.

Similarly, it allows us  to look into the past

and to imagine what didn't happen,  but could have happened.

The subjunctive is  the most powerful mood,

that can conjure alternate realities with just the idea of 'could have'

But within this idea of 'should have' is a Pandora's box

Growing up in Pennsylvania  as a Vietnamese refugee,

Would we have been imprisoned like my father's cousin

being tortured and  sentenced to hard labour?

The night that my family  was fleeing Saigon, my entire family,

parents, grandparents,  aunts and uncles,

I began crying, shrieking uncontrollably,

so much so that my entire family  decided to wait for the next bus.

it exploded and everyone on board was killed.

As a kid, I thought a lot  about our good fortune in escaping

and about what  would have happened if we hadn't.

but I was pondering things that my parents couldn't ponder,

and it was all because  of the English subjunctive.

What happens then if a language doesn't have a subjunctive

and can't express  the idea of 'could have'?

And what if that language  were Vietnamese?

For my father there were  no alternate realities in 1975,

there was just what happened and what didn't happen.

of loosing a life  that he should've had,

In Vietnam, my father was a lawyer and an aspiring politician,

he should've had a career,  he should've been somebody important.

Yet there he was in 1975  in a country he didn't know,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TEDx】Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive: Phuc Tran at TEDxDirigo

world

language

English

country