Second Conditional

Question

I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han Solo and his company with the words, 'We would be honoured if you would join us'. It is certainly not a pure second conditional and what I would like to find out is if it is common or at least acceptable to say it this way, say, in an informal or whatever speech for an average native speaker. Do you use this construction with 'would' after 'if' at all in your everyday English? I must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in Polish language.
Kind regards,
Wiktor

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han ... English? I must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in Polish language.[/nq]
It is a particularly polite way wy of inviting somebody to do something. It is only used in this sort of context. Otherwise we use the past tense in the "if2 clause (actually a conjunctive, but there is no difference in form between the past simple and the (past or second) conjunctive except for the verb "to be").
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I saw Star Wars Episode V the other day. At a certain point in the movie, Darth Vader "welcomes" Han ... for an average native speaker. Do you use this construction with 'would' after 'if' at all in your everyday English?[/nq]
According to my grammar checker, in formal English, that would be: "If you would join us, then we would be honoured.", so that the grammar checker doesn't want "then" in the first construction.
[nq:1]I must say it is a natural way of how that sort of sentences is built in Polish language.[/nq]
I haven't noticed a preference for either order of clauses in English. I imajin that Polish also allows for the clause to become a verb phrase, as in:
"You joining us would honour us."

Second Conditional

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