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I was running across this advertisement for an English language school on the subway this morning:
English fit for travel, as if you have your teacher with you.
This sounds somehow wrong to me. Shouldn't the subjunctive use the past form of have in this case, as in 'As if you had your teacher with you'?
This is a perfect example of something that is grammatically correct, yet highly unidiomatic. In other words, a native would never word it like this. Here are some options that I would personally prefer as a native:
English for travel: It's like traveling with your teacher.
English for tourists: It's like having your teacher as a tour guide.
English for travel: It's like taking your teacher on the road.
(I don't really like any of these either - the whole premise seems corny to me, but they're a lot more palatable than the original to my ear at least).
It is grammatically incorrect, according to standard English. If I were in charge of that school (but I am not, so I wrote 'were' just then) I would fire the folks who came up with that setence.
Whether one calls it the subjunctive or irrealis is another thing. English does not have a lot of things that Latin has, or had.
This is a great question. I had to think about it for a while! AmE native, btw.
"As if you had your teacher with you" is definitely grammatically correct and sounds natural when spoken. If you're erring on the side of caution, certainly go with the "had" version.
If we venture off the grammatically correct path and wander a bit into the forest of sounds-okay-when-spoken-but-maybe-don't-say-it-to-a-pedantic-grammarian-or-put-it-in-a-term-paper, the "have" version might be acceptable as well. It somewhat accents the present-tense aspect of the phrase. It might connote the feeling "this course is so good it'll feel like your teacher is with you all the time, very much in the present".
Note that this feeling is by no means a hard and fast rule and different English speakers, especially the purists among us, might beg strongly to differ. However, in spoken American English, many good speakers might not bat an eye at the "have" version. Whether the English language company that wrote the ad put this much thought behind it or not is another question entirely.
