Subjunctive Confusion

Hello Grammar Angels!

Living for the last 40 years in California USA, I rarely hear the subjunctive form using HAD.

Had he been here yesterday, I would have told him.

Is this the imperfect or the past subjunctive? In Italian it would be translated with the imperfect subjunctive: Se fosse stato li l'avrei detto. I find that having grown up on the East Coast of the USA with a significant British influence in school and at home, I am often sorry to note the disappearance of the beautiful uses of the subjunctive mood. Add to that my study of French and Italian and I am often confused. The Italians still honor the subjunctive, especially the imperfect in past constructions whereas the French seem to have abandoned the imperfect subjunctive in spoken French preferring for the last 40+ years to use the imperfect indicative: Si j'etais...(imperfect) The Italians would say, Se fossi (imperfect subjunctive).

On Grammarist.com I found the following,( the site did not allow me to respond, sending me an error message when I tried to register):

If I were to make an educated guess as to why it’s in the present, I would say that it’s because the hypothetical situation is in the present. For instance;

If he were lazy, he wouldn’t attend the party.

The pluperfect (past) subjunctive would be:

, he wouldn’t have attended the party.

(Here I would write: Had he been lazy...) What can you tell me about these two choices?

The distinction is clear when you look at the following clauses’ tenses, respectively;

present conditional, past conditional

I know it’s confusing that the formation of the present subjunctive requires a past construction.

Now I am confused again. I would never think to say, If he were to have been lazy!

Thank you for your help,

Gayle