latin - Is there a well-known secular sentence that uses all three of the imperative, indicative, and subjunctive moods?


The following English sentence, a 19ᵗʰtranslation from a medieval Latin hymn from the 12ᵗʰ or 13ᵗʰ century, is well known, at least among Christians:



O come O come Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.



It uses the imperative mood (come, come, ransom), the indicative mood (mourns) and the subjunctive mood (appear).


This sentence uses three moods, but it also packs in a good deal of Christian theology, which makes it problematic in an English class, so is there a well-known secular sentence that uses all three of the imperative, indicative, and subjunctive moods?



Answer



Well, subjunctive mood is a bit opaque to me, and it's more than one sentence, but perhaps



Just sit right back


And you'll hear a tale


A tale of a fateful trip,


That started from this tropic port,


Aboard this tiny ship.


...


The weather started getting rough,


The tiny ship was tossed;


If not for the courage of the fearless crew


The Minnow would be lost.


(The Minnow would be lost.)



"Just sit right back" sounds like imperative to me, and I think "If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost" matches some of the examples I've found of subjunctive mood, with everything else in indicative.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?