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ESL forum >
Grammar and Linguistics > Help is needed: wish sentences
Help is needed: wish sentences
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diadora
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Help is needed: wish sentences
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I know that something is annoying you. I wish you ____
what it is maybe. I can help you.
A) to tell B)
tell C) told D) will tell
I am hesitating between two answers. They are A and C. Can you, dear colleagues prove your answers with exact grammar rules. The two answers seem the same meaning to me. I can �t differentiate between them. Please, show grammar sources. |
15 May 2016
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Apodo
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I know that something is annoying you. I wish you ____ what it is maybe. I can help you. Check the position of �maybe �, and �me � is needed here. This is the best sounding answer is: I wish you would tell me what it is. Maybe I can help you. |
15 May 2016
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yanogator
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I agree with Apodo. If it had been "I want", then A would be correct, but we use "would" after "wish" I wish it would stop raining. I wish he would return my call. I wish she would tell me what she wants. It doesn �t have to be "would", of course, Other conditional forms work, too. I wish I had a million dollars. I wish you could visit me. Bruce |
15 May 2016
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diadora
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Everything is given correctly. According to Oxford Advanced Learner �s Dictionary, there is also construction "wish smb to do" besides "want smb to do". That is why I am hesitating. |
15 May 2016
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yanogator
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Yes, I realize now that my answer was incomplete. "I wish you to ..." is a way of requesting a person to do something. It is stronger than "I wish you would...", which is a statement of what the speaker would like to happen, but not quite a request. "I wish you to run an errand for me" is about the same as "Please run an errand for me". In your sentence, "I wish you would tell me" is an invitation to tell me your problem. If the speaker said "I wish you to tell me", it would be a little rude, because it would be requesting that the person reveal some personal information. If the speaker knows the troubled person well enough to actually ask to be told, than he/she would use a less formal way of requesting it. I hope this makes it a little clearer. You could grammatically defend choice A, but a native speaker wouldn �t say it that way. Bruce |
15 May 2016
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FrauSue
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I find it strange that the given sentence comes from an official exercise. The punctuation is wrong. In my opinion, it should be: I wish you would tell me what it is. Maybe I can help you. I agree with Bruce that "to tell" is grammatically correct but comes across as stilted and potentially rude. I wish you to tell me what it is. Maybe I can help you. |
16 May 2016
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FrauSue
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If you were regretting a missed opportunity in the past, you would use "had told." I didn �t know you were so ill. I wish you had told me. I could have helped you out more. (This implies that now it is too late to do anything.) |
16 May 2016
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