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If I WERE rich , I would buy a car.

If more good NEWS WAS reported, we would feel more hopeful.

For the former, because it is a hypothetical scenario, we bring 'were' instead of 'was' even though we have 'I'.

But why we say 'news was' and not 'news were'? It is because news is uncountable? Or 'were' only applies to 'I'?

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Antonio Conte
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    We don’t. “If more good news were reported…” is precisely what those of us who naturally employ the past subjunctive in irrealis constructions would say. And those who don’t would also say, “If I was rich”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 03 '17 at 08:21
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is based on the misapprehension that “if more good news were reported” is not used. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 03 '17 at 08:22
  • @Antonio The Word "news" is a singular noun, that's the reason behind "News was" instead of "News were". – Kanchana Randika Jul 03 '17 at 08:28
  • @Learner "I" is a singular pronoun; that's the reason behind "I was" instead... um. Your point here is invalid. – Khuldraeseth na'Barya Jul 03 '17 at 11:25
  • @Scrooble In the given example the sentence with I is in SUBJUNCTIVE ( IF + I / HE / SHE / IT + WERE) mood which is used to express a hypothetical situation but the second sentence is not in the SUBJUNCTIVE mood. – Kanchana Randika Jul 03 '17 at 11:38
  • @Learner Why isn't the second sentence subjunctive? It's expressing the hypothetical that good news is reported. – Barmar Jul 03 '17 at 17:52
  • I think it's because the second sentence is specifically referring to reporting in the past, while the first one is talking about a hypothetical present. You could also say "If more good news had been reported" to express a subjunctive past tense, or "were being reported" for a subjunctive present. – Barmar Jul 03 '17 at 17:54
  • Another difference between the two sentences is that "rich" is an adjective and with "was" or "were" is a verb, while "reported" is a verb and "was" or "were" is an auxiliary verb. – Barmar Jul 03 '17 at 17:55
  • @Learner I am very familiar with the subjunctive mood. I was pointing out that the number of the subject does not affect the verb's mood. – Khuldraeseth na'Barya Jul 03 '17 at 18:00
  • @JanusBahsJacquet you see , I saw ' if more good news was reported' from an IELTS prompt and I thought this is probably the correct way. Just to be clear , both 'if more good news was' and 'if more good news were' are correct? And what should I search to learn more? Subjunctives? – Antonio Conte Jul 04 '17 at 17:09

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