Lets say I want to make my birthday wish
1:I wish I get the tickets to the Super Bowl(like a lottery).
2:I wish I would get the tickets to the Super Bowl,
All of the grammar websites I have referred to so far regarding tense usage with wish tell me it is used with either a past tense or a past perfect for regrets or past wishes.
I wish I had a car.
I wish I had studied hard for my tests.and would for the future wishes like expression #2. Does that make the expression #1 incorrect?
Can anyone explain to me which tense to use in my birthday wish-related context?
Answer
In US use today, the verb wish is far more often used to express a ‘counterfactual’—that is, you wish you would get something you think it unlikely or impossible you will or can get:
I wish someone would give me a Mercedes.
I wish I had a million dollars.
I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener.
I wish he was dead.
This is what your websites call ‘past tense’ or ‘past perfect’, but it’s not. It’s use of past forms to express unreal or impossible events; one technical term is irrealis. (The old-fashioned technical term is subjunctive.)
The once-ordinary indicative use is now found largely in old, more or less ritualized phrases:
We wish you a Merry Christmas.
Wish upon a star. (Wish I may, wish I might, First star I see tonight …)
Wishing well
You may call me if you wish.
Best wishes, your friend, Thor.
In describing your desire for gifts you have a realistic chance of receiving, we say hope now, with the complement in the indicative:
I hope I’m going to get a new laptop from my parents.
I hope I get Super Bowl tickets.
I hope somebody gets me a subscription to the OED.
I hope I clean up.
In announcing your desire to prospective donors we say would like (I want is a little bit too forthright).
I’d like Super Bowl tickets.
I sure would like a Kindle for my birthday.
I’d really really like a date with Emma Watson. Failing that, with the redhead in my Psych class.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Thor , Answer Author : StoneyB on hiatus
