verbs - "If there were" vs. "if there was"



I saw that there were already examples on this, but I didn't find any specific enough. My problem is this sentence:



If there were anything that he didn't want, it was to hurt me.



I previously had the sentence written as:



If there was anything that he didn't want, it was to hurt me.



But both seem a little awkward to me.



Answer



"Were" would be subjunctive, expressing a condition contrary to fact ("If there were anything that he didn't want [but there wasn't anything that he didn't want]"); "was" would be a simple condition. So you want "was" here.


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