Wait until he (has, had) gone

Question

This is the conversation:Thomas: Oh, someone is ringing the bell.Elizabeth: It must be my friend Anne, but, please, don't leave yet.Thomas: I will wait untill she [had] [has] gone.Which one is correct?  I think it must be "had" because he uses here the subjunctive mode. Am I right?

Tamguatlay · Accepted Answer

No. ...has gone.

Note: until, not untill.
Also, subjunctive mood, not mode.

Gamboler · Answer

Thanks tamguatlay.

Of course, I intended to write "until". It was a typo error.

What I still don't understand is why we can't use "she had gone" in that sentence.
I googled this expression (she had gone) and found 2.630.000 results.

Two examples:

1. "Now she lay, determined not to go to sleep until she had gone over every minute of it. They had left the house shortly after a leisurely breakfast..." (taken from the book Just Like Proper Grown-Ups, by Christina Hopkinson).
2. "...mutinous one, he imagined, until she had gone to London and got a job in an art gallery" (taken from the book Drink This by Eileen Dewhurst).

Is it or isn't it subjunctive mood? Notice that it indicates future possibility (until she won't be here means that we don't know if Anne will stay with Elizabeth two minutes, three days or four years). I am from Spain, and I tell you that in Spanish the second part of the original sentence is undoubtedly subjunctive mood.

Tamguatlay · Answer

I will wait until she has gone.
I would wait until she had gone. ['would' is the past tense form of 'will'; 'had' is the past tense form of 'has'.]

CalifJim · Answer

gambolerin Spanish the second part of the original sentence is undoubtedly subjunctive mood.

But English doesn't use the subjunctive after "until".

Anyway, you have two sets tenses to choose from, don't you, depending on the tense in the main clause? It seems to me that you guys use something like hasta que [se vaya / se haya ido] when the main clause has the future of the present (like será) and hasta que [se fuera / se hubiera ido] when the main clause has the future of the past (like sería). In that sense, English is like Spanish, matching 'will wait' to 'has gone' and 'would wait' to 'had gone', as stated in an earlier post. (I hope I've got those Spanish tenses right.)

By the way, if English did use the subjunctive after "until" it would use the present subjunctive if the the main clause had "will", thus: I will wait until she have gone. (In fact, that's wrong because we don't use the subjunctive after "until", but the point is that even if we did use the subjunctive, it wouldn't be 'had gone' in this sentence.)

CJ

Wait until he (has, had) gone

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