Chapter 7 虚拟语气
7.3 现在虚拟（ZxCx）
7.3 现在虚拟（ZxCx）
（一）
假如世界是一个村落
我曾经读过大卫·史密斯（David J. Smith）写的一篇文章《假如世界是一个村落》（If the World Were a Village）。大卫把拥有60多亿人口的地球想象成一个只有100人的村落，他以这种独特的方式，为我们提供了一个全球的视角，让我们懂得不同民族和地域中的人们的生活是如此不同，促使我们换一个角度重新审视自己的生活。
1 If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south, 8 Africans.
52 would be female and 48 would be male.
70 would be non-white and 30 would be white.
70 would be non-Christian and 30 would be Christian.
89 would be heterosexual and 11 would be homosexual.
22 would speak Chinese, 9 would speak English and 7 would speak Spanish.
6 would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth.
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education.
1 would own a computer.
透过这张微缩的“世界村落图”，我们可以从国籍、语言、宗教信仰、教育水平等众多方面更清晰地了解这个世界。
2 The following is also something to ponder…
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation…you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep…you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in dish someplace…you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealth.
If your parents are still alive and still married…you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
通过比较上述两部分的英文内容，可以发现，例句1中的谓语形式（如“If we could shrink…it would look…”）与例句2中的谓语形式（如最后一句“If your parents are…you are very rare…”）有很大的不同：例句1中的谓语大都采用了“would+动词原形”的形式，而例句2中的谓语则采用了动词的一般现在时态。这是为什么呢？
这里其实就涉及对现在一般情况的虚拟。当大卫说：
If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.
毫无疑问这是一个虚拟假设的情形，因为我们不可能把地球上的60多亿人口缩减到100人，所以作者在从句中用了过去式could，而主句中用would look这样标准的一般虚拟的谓语形式。接下来的黑体部分都是虚拟主句谓语，所以都统一采用了would接动词原形的形式。比如：
1） There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south, 8 Africans.
2） 52 would be female and 48 would be male.
3） 70 would be non-white and 30 would be white.
4） 70 would be non-Christian and 30 would be Christian.
5） 89 would be heterosexual and 11 would be homosexual.
6） 22 would speak Chinese, 9 would speak English and 7 would speak Spanish.
7） 6 would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
8） 80 would live in substandard housing.
9） 70 would be unable to read.
10） 50 would suffer from malnutrition.
11） 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth.
12） 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education.
13） 1 would own a computer.
在例句2中，有这样一句话：
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
这里从句的谓语woke up用过去式并不是表示虚拟，而是因为this morning（今天早晨）相当于一个过去的时间，所以woke up就是一个一般过去时态。同样，主句的谓语用了一般现在时态are，而不是would be这样的虚拟形式。在接下来的几句里，作者都是在叙述真实的条件，所以都没有采用虚拟语气。比如：
14） If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation…you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
15） If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep…you are richer than 75% of this world.
16） If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in dish someplace…you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealth.
17） If your parents are still alive and still married…you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
（二）
假如给我三天光明
相信大家都知道美国女作家、教育家海伦·凯勒（Helen Keller，1880-1968）的故事。她两岁时，一场大病夺取了她的听力和视力，后受业于安·沙利文·麦希（Anne Sullivan Macy）夫人。1904年，海伦以优异的成绩毕业于剑桥大学拉德克里夫学院（Radcliffe College）。她终生致力于聋哑和盲人的公共救助事业。下面这篇短文就是选自她的《假如给我三天光明》（Three Days to See），文章借助“虚拟”的假设来让人们进行换位思考，让人们真正意识到拥有健康是多么幸福：
3 I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
If I were the president of a university I should establish a compulsory course in“How to Use Your Eyes”. The professor would try to show his pupils how they could add joy to their lives by really seeing what passes unnoticed before them. He would try to awake their dormant and sluggish faculties.
Suppose you set your mind to work on the problem of how you would use your own eyes if you had only three more days to see. If with the oncoming darkness of the third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you spend those three precious intervening days? What would you most want to let your gaze rest upon?
请注意上文中的这些句子表达：
…it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life.
If I were the president of a university I should establish a compulsory course in“How to Use Your Eyes”.
…how you would use your own eyes if you had only three more days to see.
If with the oncoming darkness of the third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you spend those three precious intervening days?
这些都是标准的现在虚拟句，即从句使用一般过去时态；如果是be动词，则不论句子的主语是单数还是复数，都是复数形式were，而不是was；相应地，主句用“would/should+动词原形”。
（三）
下面这段话有关幸福婚姻的秘诀：
4 It is not the lack of love that makes unhappy marriages; it is the lack of friendship. My advice to all men is“Choose in marriage a woman that you would choose as a friend if she were a man”. This applies to women in the same way. One tragedy in many marriages is that the romantic love on which it was based never ripened into friendship.
妙语点睛 这里作者说“如果这个女人是一个男人”，但实际上女人是无法变为男人的（当然变性手术除外），所以这是一个对一般情况的虚拟。作者通过现在虚拟的句子…a woman that you would choose as a friend if she were a man，来说明夫妻之间有友情的存在对于幸福婚姻的重要性。
说到美国人的极大浪费，美国环境保护专家彼得·拉文（Peter Raven）有这样一句话：
5 If everyone lived like Americans, then you would need three planet earths to sustain that level of consumption.
妙语点睛 由此可见，美国人常常指责别国破坏地球环境，浪费资源，殊不知他们自己才是破坏地球环境真正的罪魁祸首。在这句话中，彼得就是用了虚拟语气，因为事实上我们没有三个地球来供我们浪费和糟蹋。所以，主从句的谓语分别采用了“would动词（need）原形”和过去式（lived）这样标准的一般虚拟形式。
下面这句话则用虚拟语气反问，假如中国也达到美国的生活水准，比如每个家庭拥有两辆小汽车、每人每年肉类的消费量达到122公斤，那中国该怎样应对这种需求呢？
6 How would the Chinese cope if the average family in China had two cars, and, like Americans, the average person ate 269 pounds （122 kilograms） of meat a year?
妙语点睛 由于事实上，中国目前还没有达到这种生活水平，所以在叙述时也不要忘了使用虚拟语气，即主句用would+cope，从句用过去式ate。
第五章“完成时态”的5.3节谈到罗素的自传中有这个句子：
7 This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
一个美国教授谈到语言学习时说：
8 For a North American or European, languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese have what is like pictograph or ideographic type of language. Native speakers of European languages often have a very difficult time in learning one of the Asian languages, as our ears are not attuned to the sounds or characters of the language. In China, I am like a child in terms of the language, and illiterate in terms of being able to read or write Chinese. If I could read and write in Chinese, I would need to recognize at least 3,000 or more characters.
Chinese also have a hard time learning the European languages such as English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German, because each of these languages is filled with many idioms which don’t make much sense in terms of the formal language that they learn.
妙语点睛 因为这位美国教授不懂汉语，所以他用了虚拟语气“If I could read and write in Chinese, I would need to recognize at least 3,000 or more characters.”。
我的一位美国朋友在和我聊起中国学生学习英文所遭遇的众多困惑和难题时说道：
9 From the letters I have been receiving from our Chinese readers, the problem with tense seems to be foremost. English tenses would make me tense if I were a Chinese student.
的确，时态问题一直是我们学习英语的一个“老大难”问题，在复杂的时态变化的迷宫里，我们往往一筹莫展，迷失方向。于是在口语或作文中，只好把英语当成汉语一样不做谓语的变形，通篇都是“一般现在时”。虚拟语气其实就是时态问题，不过它要比一般的时态问题更难，因为它不仅需要判断谓语动作发生的时间，还要能够敏锐地“嗅出”与事实相反的虚拟“味道”来。比如上文中的“如果我是一名中国学生，时态同样会让我犯憷”这句话，从时间的角度来看，这是表示一般的情况，即现在时间；从语义的角度来看，因为是一个美国人在说假如他是一名中国学生，这显然就是与事实相反的一个虚拟假设。综合这两方面，所以要用对现在虚拟的谓语形式：主句谓语用“would+动词原形”，从句谓语用过去式；若从句谓语是be动词，就多用were，而少用was。这就是对一般情形虚拟的谓语表达形式，或者叫作所谓的“语法规则”。在这里，我之所以不愿意说是“语法规则”，是因为很多英语学习者总是把“语法规则”当作自己学习英语的“死规则”，而没有把它们看成是引导和帮助我们正确使用英语的“活思维”！由此往往会造成这样的误解：以为是先有一套语法规则和教条，然后必须按照这些规则才能制造出具体的语言。而事实恰恰相反，是先有语言，然后再从大量的语言实践中总结出在使用这种语言时所遵循的一般思维规律或表达倾向，即所谓的规则。套用鲁迅先生的一句话就是：世界本无语法规则，说的人多了便成了规则。所以，语法规则不是什么不可逾越的清规戒律或天规，而是人们的思维规律或语言表达习惯。中国的英语学习者和以英语为母语的人的最大区别就是：我们懂英语语法规则却没有英语思维，而老外是在使用英语思维，尽管他们不懂语法规则。我们学的语法规则都用来对付英语考试的选择题了，而没有真正懂得规则背后的英语思维。由于没有形成真正的英语思维，所以在使用英语，如口语交际或作文时便成了“残疾人”——说不出、写不来。
这里讨论的虚拟语气尤其能考量我们的英语思维能力。在日常的口语交际中，我们会遇到大量虚拟假设的情景，此时就需要有良好的思维嗅觉能力，敏感地辨别真假情形，正确地使用语气表达。比如对于“假如我当总统，我会……”这样一个简单的句子，都要根据说话人的不同身份来选择不同的语气表达。比如，这句话若是出自一个小学生之口，他应该说成：
10 If I became President, I would…
因为对于一个小学生来说，“当总统”是一个与现实相反的虚拟假设，所以这句话要借助谓语动词变化（即从句用过去式became，主句用would接一个原形动词）来传达这种虚拟的情形。但若是对于一位正在竞选中的总统候选人，比如2016年美国总统大选中的民主党候选人希拉里（Hillary），她则要这么说：
11 If I become President, I will make America stronger at home and more respected in the world.
因为她应该用表示真实条件的陈述语气来表明对自己未来总统竞选获胜的信心。
如果希拉里用虚拟语气说：“If I became President, I would…”，恐怕连本来支持她的选民都要改旗易帜支持她的竞争对手了。由此可见虚拟语气的表达之精妙，它绝不是一个死规则，而是一种活生生的英语思维。
思维总结
这一节讨论的是ZxCx型虚拟语气，即主句和从句都表示对现在一般情况的虚拟。此时，主句用would do，而从句用一般过去时态did；若从句的谓语是be动词，则一律用were。
思维训练 7.3 Key
一、请阅读下面的美文，并用括号中动词的适当形式填空。
1. If I Were a Boy Again
If I ______ （be） a boy again, I ______ （practice） perseverance oftener, and never give up a thing because it was hard or inconvenient.
If I ______ （be） a boy again, I ______ （school） myself into a habit of attention; I ______ （let） nothing come between me and the subject in hand. I ______ （remember） that a good skater never tries to skate in two directions at once.
If I ______ （be） a boy again, I ______ （look） on the cheerful side. Life is very much like a mirror: if you smile upon it, it smiles back upon you; but if you frown and look doubtful on it, you will get a similar look in return.
If I ______ （be） a boy again, I ______ （demand） of myself more courtesy towards my companions and friends, and indeed towards strangers as well. The smallest courtesies along the rough roads of life are like the little birds that sing to us all winter long, and make that season of ice and snow more endurable.
Finally, instead of trying hard to be happy, as if that were the sole purpose of life, I would, if I ______ （be） a boy again, try still harder to make others happy.
二、请用括号中动词的适当形式填空。
2. A: The subway sure is packed this morning.
B: Yeah. It’s a pain that if we all ______ （drive） every day we ______ （not, be） able to breathe in this city.
3. How fast does light travel?
How fast does light travel? About 300,000 kilometers per second. So light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to go to earth. Does this seem slow? Well, if you ______ （can, drive） to the sun at 100 kilometers per hour, it ______ （take） you 177 years to get there!
三、请回答下面的问题。
4. Man: I haven’t seen George all day.
Woman: Have you checked the lab? I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept there.
Question: What does the woman imply about George?
A. He is probably still asleep in the lab.
B. He spends a lot of time in the lab.
C. She needs to check his work.
D. She has no idea where he is.
四、请阅读下面这则笑话，并找出其中使用的虚拟语气。
5. If I were a millionaire
The teacher asked his pupils to write an essay, telling what they would do if they had five million dollars. Every pupil except little Sammy began writing immediately. Sammy sat idle, twiddling his fingers and watching the flies on the ceiling.
Teacher collected their papers, and Sammy handed in a blank sheet.
“How is this, Sammy?”asked the teacher.“Is this your essay? Every other pupil has written two sheets or more, while you have done nothing!”
“Well,”replied Sammy,“that’s what I would do if I were a millionaire!”
五、请阅读下面这篇美文，并找出其中使用的虚拟语气。
6. If I could save time in a bottle
the first thing that I’d like to do
would be to save every day until eternity passes away
just to spend them with you
if I could make days last forever
if words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
again I would spend them with you