Is this sentence grammatically correct "No matter how much I try, he wouldn’t understand"? alternatively, can we also use "No matter how much I tried, he wouldn’t understand"?
2 Answers
"Now matter how much I tried, ..." may have two meanings.
In the first meaning, "tried" is in the subjunctive mood. It means that you are speaking hypothetically. You probably are not going to try.
In the second meaning, "tried" is in the simple past. You are describing something that happened before.
"No matter how much I try, he wouldn’t understand" doesn't make sense. "Wouldn't" is either the subjunctive mood or the simple past, as I described above. But "try" is neither of those.
What would make more sense might be "No matter how much I try, he doesn't understand." Then the verb forms would match. The meaning would be that you are describing an ongoing situation.
You may also write "No matter how much I try, he won't understand." The meaning would be that you will try, and you are quite sure he won't understand.
I hope this helps.
I would not use either although I recognize that either may be heard.
In American English, conditionals are in flux.
Received American English in the past would have said
No matter how much I [might/would] have tried, he would not have understood
implies that nothing was actually tried;
No matter how much I tried, he did not understand
implies that explanation was actually tried but failed;
No matter how much I have tried, he does not understand
implies that explanation is ongoing but failing so far, and
No matter how much I try, he will not understand
is a prediction that any future explanation is certain (almost certain) to fail, but is not a prediction that the attempt will be made.
All of these subtleties of tense appear to me to being lost in the U.S. and may only have been prevalent in the past among the well educated.
