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I think they both acceptable, but which one you recommend me to use in conversation.

If he were/was an elephant.

Isn't were sounds too formal/oldfashioned?

Ives
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  • There are a number of children's songs starting "If I were...". But which to recommend is purely a matter of opinion. Certainly in British English "If he were an elephant" is not unknown, and "If he was" sounds remarkably wrong to me. Corpora of written works aren't going to be much help with finding what is generally used in conversation though. – Andrew Leach Jan 22 '18 at 07:41
  • If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady.... – WS2 Jan 22 '18 at 08:30
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    It's called the contra-factual: You are of course, not him, so you would not just say "if I was you". Using were here suggests "it's not true, but just imagine so". – Kris Jan 22 '18 at 10:58
  • If I were [to be] you. – Nigel J Jan 22 '18 at 12:57

1 Answers1

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I don't think 'were' sounds too formal or too old-fashioned. So you should feel free to use 'were' for hypothetical conditionals.

That said, I've heard native speakers use 'was' instead of 'were' in conversations for the third person singular subject (e.g., he, she, it, etc.) or the first person singular "I". Actually, it seems that more people are saying "was" instead of "were" at least in informal conversations.

One caveat, though, might be using 'was' for a set phrase like "If I were you". Since this phrase has been used so often that using 'was' here wouldn't sound terribly natural.

JK2
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