{"id":2016,"date":"2017-03-21T17:10:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T17:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2017-03-21T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T17:10:31","slug":"expressing-wishes-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/expressing-wishes-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Expressing wishes in English"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The phrase <strong>I wish I had\u2026<\/strong> is the most common structure used to talk about our wishes. Here are some common wishes people have.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I wish I had more money.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had more friends.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had a bigger house.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I was taller.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I was more beautiful.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had curly hair.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had blue eyes.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had a caring husband.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had a cute daughter.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had a better memory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note the use of past tense verbs in this structure.<\/p>\n<p>In the phrase<strong> I wish I had\u2026 \u2018had\u2019<\/strong> is the simple past form of the verb \u2018have\u2019. Instead of had, you can use the simple past form of other verbs as well.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I wish I spoke French.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I knew Italian.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I looked smarter.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I drove a Ferrari.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I lived in Shanghai.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had a golden voice.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I knew more people.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I played the piano.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although we use past tense forms in this structure, we are not referring to the past in these sentences. Instead, we are merely expressing our wishes in the present.<\/p>\n<p>To talk about past wishes, we can use the structure I wish I had had\u2026 Note that the second had in this structure is the past participle form of have. Past participle forms of other verbs are also possible in this case.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I wish I had had more money.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had worked harder. (= I didn\u2019t work harder, but now I regret it.)<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had had more time on my business trip last week.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I hadn\u2019t trusted him.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had listened to his advice.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had sent the money yesterday itself.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had bought that house.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had married her.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had invited Tina to the party.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I had been more careful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The phrase I wish I had\u2026 is the most common structure used to talk about our wishes. Here are some common wishes people have. I wish I had more money. I wish I had&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","tag-english-speaking-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}