politeness - Which dialects of English consider "would" to be a polite form of "will"?


My recent trip to India exposed me to many sentences using "would" as a polite substitute for "will", as in



Please make sure to leave on time. The last bus would depart at 8PM.


Thanks for checking out early. However, there would be no refund.



I am not familiar with such patterns in AmE or BE. Are they common in particular settings that I'm not aware of? How common are they in India?


Note: the following query seems to return a bunch of other examples (among conditional uses of course) inurl:.co.in "would"



Answer



As a native speaker of Indian English, I can confirm that a large number of Indians use would in place of will. I can also confirm that this is still considered nonstandard, even in India, which means there is still a large enough population using will and would in the sense currently considered correct/accepted. Linguists I've spoken to think this phenomenon of using would in place of will has come about because ESL learners are taught that using would is more polite than will (e.g., Would you like some coffee?).


This can cause some confusion when people from India interact with people from other parts of the world. A colleague of mine missed a deadline because a counterpart of his in the U.S. said, "I would send the report today." My colleague assumed this meant that the U.S. employee would send the report, since he (my colleague) took would to mean the same thing as will.


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