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The nuns taught me that shall/will is conjugated this way:

I shall
you will
he will
we shall
you will
they will

Similarly, should/would is conjugated this way:

I should
you would
he would
we should
you would
they would

My specific question was, how long ago was I shall / we shall and I should / we should replaced by I will / we will and I would / we would in the popular vernacular?

Had I got it wrong back in the fourth grade, I could have expected my knuckles to get rapped

I've deleted the editorializing comment I made (apologies). Now all I want is to get a timeline for when the accepted usage changed.

jimm101
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T Bell
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  • Related and probable duplicates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... – tchrist Aug 03 '22 at 12:46
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    It's not "correct" usage, so there's nothing to decry. It's a pattern that was only ever used by a slim minority of native speakers, mostly Oxbridgians living in the south of England a long time ago. – tchrist Aug 03 '22 at 14:52
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    The suggestions in the post are total nonsense. Would and should are two different verbs; they are not inflected versions of one another, and they never have been. From a false premise any conclusion at all may be drawn. – John Lawler Aug 03 '22 at 16:54
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    I disagree with the "nonsense" comment. Whatever you label it, the conjugation I provided was in fact correct. We are not talking about two different verbs. – T Bell Aug 03 '22 at 20:27
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    It's not that it changed as the proponents of the view you learned in grade school have all died out. There never was a speech community that followed those rules; they were dreamed up by country parsons with classical educations and too much time on their hands, who felt that The Poor would do better if they talked more like their Betters did, or at least like the parsons thought the Betters would speak if they tried hard enough. Basically they were Influencers, as we call such people today. I learned this stuff too, but I never heard anybody talk that way. – John Lawler Aug 07 '22 at 19:58
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    Well, I was taught that 'I shall' is a prediction, 'I will' expresses resolution (as used in the traditional C of E marriage service), and for some reason it's the other way round for you ('Cinderella, you shall go to the ball.') – Kate Bunting Aug 07 '22 at 20:01
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    As far as the history of would and should is concerned, there used to be English modal verbs that were inflected for tense. Will (actually willan in OE) was one and it had a past tense would; shall was another and it had a past tense should. But now they are just four of the 9 English modal auxiliaries and don't inflect for tense any more. Nor have they ever commuted with one another in the manner you describe (btw, the original zombie source says that to emphasize, one reverses the pattern -- another thing I've never witnessed). – John Lawler Aug 07 '22 at 20:03
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – tchrist Aug 07 '22 at 20:58
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    @JohnLawler This is a great question (though probably asked a hundred times before) . Why are questions about form (or history, or lack of history, or made up history) closed as opinion? The OP is not asking for whether things should happen this way or what is best. Just for information. That is entirely on topic. If you know something about the history, that's part of a good answer. If not much is known about the history, the range of dates where the change happened, that's simply lack of knowledge, not opinion. – Mitch Aug 09 '22 at 12:55
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    @Mitch When they're full of false presuppositions and vague ideas that have to be corrected before even beginning to answer the question, for starts. I don't think it's "great" at all. And why ask it again if they didn't get it the first hundred times? – John Lawler Aug 09 '22 at 14:33
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    @JohnLawler You may not have witnessed it, but I certainly have on my [eastern] side of the Atlantic. I was taught the forms in the question at school too, in the Seventies/early Eighties. – Andrew Leach Aug 09 '22 at 15:00
  • I'm neither knowledgeable about nor responsible for how English is or was taught anywhere in the UK. I had a US Catholic education, to which I refer. – John Lawler Aug 09 '22 at 15:21
  • Fowler in 1908 struggled to explain the usage of shall and will, suggesting the existence of 3 systems and 7 rules governing their use. "Rule 2. The Coloured-Future System" appears to match the OP's contours. I've struggled and failed to summarise or indeed understand Fowler's remarks. Perhaps someone else could attempt it. Regardless, an excellent rule in life is to ignore anything a nun tells you. – Stuart F Aug 10 '22 at 09:48
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    @JohnLawler How do you reconcile 'There never was a speech community that followed those rules…' with 'they were dreamed up by country parsons with (anywhat)'? Right or wrong, how did the country parsons not themselves constitute a speech community? – Robbie Goodwin Sep 08 '22 at 20:26
  • @JohnLawler. Where does 'Would and should are different verbs…' come from, please. How is either 'would' or 'should' a verb? – Robbie Goodwin Sep 08 '22 at 20:31
  • @RobbieGoodwin If you don't know why would or should are verbs, I'm not going to tell you. You could look up "modal auxiliary verbs" if you remain puzzled. – John Lawler Sep 08 '22 at 20:55
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    @JohnLawler I see what you mean, and I suggest far fewer than one in ten native speakers of English would understand that. They might all accept is a gospel, and that doesn't mean they'd understand it. Think not about your qualified or experiences colleagues, but your own secondary-school class-mates. If my view makes sense only by suggesting that the classification 'modal auxiliary verb' should be reduced in status, so be it. Again how did the country parsons not themselves constitute a speech community? Were they not thousands strong, and much better educated than most? – Robbie Goodwin Sep 12 '22 at 18:59
  • Modal auxiliary verbs are auxiliary verbs; and auxiliary verbs are verbs. Q.E.D. Country parsons can take care of themselves. – John Lawler Sep 12 '22 at 20:47
  • By the way, verbs that are not inflected (like modal auxiliary verbs) do not have any conjugations. Conjugation is the Latin term for verbal inflection, usually arranged in a paradigm chart. No inflections, no conjugations. – John Lawler Jul 22 '23 at 15:18

2 Answers2

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It's not that it changed, as the proponents of the view you learned in grade school have all died out. There never was a speech community that followed those rules; they were dreamed up by country parsons with classical educations and too much time on their hands, who felt that The Poor would do better if they talked more like their Betters did, or at least like the parsons thought the Betters would speak if they tried hard enough. Basically they were Influencers, as we call such people today. I learned this stuff in school too, but I never heard anybody talk that way. [JL]

...

As far as the history of would and should is concerned, there used to be English modal verbs that were inflected for tense. Will (actually willan in OE) was one, and it had a past tense would; shall was another and it had a past tense should. But now they are just four of the 9 English modal auxiliaries and don't inflect for tense any more. Nor have they ever commuted with one another in the manner you describe (btw, the original zombie source says that to emphasize, one reverses the pattern -- another thing I've never witnessed). [John Lawler]

.......

Fowler in 1908 struggled to explain the usage of shall and will, suggesting the existence of 3 systems and 7 rules governing their use. "Rule 2. The Coloured-Future System" appears to match the OP's contours. I've struggled and failed to summarise or indeed understand Fowler's remarks. Perhaps someone else could attempt it. Regardless, an excellent rule in life is to ignore anything a [*non-expert] tells you. [Stuart F] [*sanitised]

John Lawler
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Edwin Ashworth
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    While it is helpful that some of the comments are now protected from deletion by having been incorporated into this wiki-answer, it should be noted that, as has been pointed out by other commentators above, they do not really answer the question. Granting, for the sake of argument, that this approach to shall/will was, by some criteria, misguided, it still remains a historical fact that millions of people were taught something like that, that they were, at least somewhat, influenced by it, and that almost nobody is affected by it any more. It is reasonable to ask when that change occurred. – jsw29 Jul 22 '23 at 16:51
  • I selected what I considered the most useful commentary. I myself came across the wsswss for future and swwsww for emphasis, with also wwwwww for expression of a wish, advice over 50 years ago, and seem to remember the teacher saying it was outdated even then, and better ditched. John Lawler is the only authority I've seen address this. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 22 '23 at 18:48
  • @jsw29 The questions asks about when the change ocurred "in the popular vernacular", and JL says that the distinction never actually existed in the popular vernacular. ("There never was a speech community that followed those rules") I therefore think that this does, technically, answer the question. – MarcInManhattan Jul 22 '23 at 19:50
  • @MarcInManhattan, saying that the rules were never followed 'in the popular vernacular' is something different from saying that 'there never was a speech community that followed those rules'. The former claim is difficult to evaluate due to the vagueness of popular vernacular, but the latter seems false, even according to Professor Lawler (who admits, in the same comment, that the 'country parsons' followed these rules, and that they were influencers, which implies that they influenced somebody) and tchrist (who says they were followed by 'Oxbridgians living in the south of England'). – jsw29 Jul 22 '23 at 20:47
  • @jsw29 I think that if "there never was a speech community that followed those rules," then that would rule out the possibility that they were ever followed "in the popular vernacular". I don't find "popular vernacular" to be very vague, but perhaps I understand it differently than you do. – MarcInManhattan Jul 22 '23 at 21:04
  • @jsw29 I don't find JL's statements contradictory. I think that he's claiming that the country parsons taught those rules to students but didn't actually follow the rules themselves when speaking. At least that's my understanding; perhaps he could clarify. – MarcInManhattan Jul 22 '23 at 21:05
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I used adde. "I shall" was never more common than "I will" (at least, back to 1800). In 1800, they were about equal. "I shall" gradually declined, now it is about 1/4 as common as "I will".

As for "should" and "would", I think your nuns were just wrong. "I should" and "I would" are both fine, but they mean different things.

Peter Flom
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