Wish vs Hope
Hola amigos! In today’s episode I compare two verbs To Wish and To Hope. Knowing the difference between these 2 verbs will make you sound more fluent! Enjoy :)
Transcription
Hey, what’s up guys? You are listening to English Made Simple, this is episode #70, numero setenta.
Hello amigos, it’s me again, your crazy host Milena, Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net.
How’s it going? What’s shaking? Hope you had a wonderful first week of 2017. Actually, it was my father’s birthday on Friday, my Dad turned 70 this week, so I dedicate this episode to him. Episode number 70.
So, I hope you are sticking with your goals, remember the ones you created on the 1st of January. Did you know that 8% of people who make New Year’s resolutions actually achieve them, the rest give up in the first week. Which ones are you? I am in the 92% haha but I haven’t even started on my goals, I wrote them down today! I am a bit slow, as you can see, what can I do?
Alrighty, now that that’s out of the way, we are ready to dive into today’s episode. Here is what we are going to cover today.
It’s going to be a really exciting one and you will learn something new as always! So here we go.
If you’ve listened to my previous episode, episode #66 I touched on the word Wish when I compared it to Want, another word want. For the new listeners of the show, please go back to episode #66 to check it out and learn a bit more about the word Wish.
Now, in today’s episode I would like to compare Hope with Wish. Why? Why would I wanna do that?
Many students find it hard to differentiate between the two verbs, to WISH and to HOPE.
However, knowing when to use Hope or Wish in a sentence correctly will just make you sound more fluent. Ok, cool.
So, in Spanish, to Wish – you could say desear or sometimes it is gustaría, me gustaría que, and to hope, esperar, from the word tener esperanza, or espero que I hope to… cool? Those two words we are going to compare!
Now, I will try my best to simplify this for you. So when do we use Hope and when do we use Wish?
We use Hope for something that is possible and likely to happen.
We use the verb hope when something is very possible.
We use the verb wish about impossible things or things that are not likely to happen (things that you don’t really expect to happen.)
I’d like to talk about the word Wish first.
WISH
Ok guys, most of the time we would use wish in the Past tense or if we use it in the present tense we would include modal verbs Would and Could. Remember these modal verbs, we learnt them in previous episodes, check out episode number 30 May vs Might vs Could and number 36 How to Ask Questions Politely? You will learn more about the modal verbs in there.
BTW, when we pronounce the words Would and Could, the L is silent. I don’t want to hear you say Would or Could, ok? Would and Could. It’s a long “u” sound.
Ok I will give you an example, when weuse Wish with modal verbs:
For example, I wish I could speak Japanese. Or I wish I could dance like Shakira.
What could be another example? Let me think.
I wish it would stop raining.
Now, let’s look at the example in the Spanish telenovela, Grand Hotel…Alicia wishes Julio would just ask her to marry him.
We also use Wish in the Past and Past Perfect Tense when we talk about regrets or making a wish about the past, you know things we wish had done in the past.
For example:
I wish I hadn’t said those things to my boss. I wish I had travelled more when I was in Chile.
So I am expressing a regret: I wish I had travelled more.
Some other times we would use the word Wish is in the Past Tense yet the meaning is in the Present Tense, [yup you heard that right!] I already covered this in episode #66 called I wish I were, I wish I could… where I tried to sing a rap song from the 90’s, I wish I was a little bit taller… it was a really bad attempt at me singing…my husband was really embarrassed for me, he said: I hope you will not do that again Milena. I really hope you will not sing again.Ok I won’t! Anyway..
Ok just for the new listeners, here’s an example where we would use Wish together with a verb in the past tense that has a meaning in the Present.
I wish I had a really cool car, something like a Ferrari Or I could say, I wish I drove a Ferrari.
Awesome!
I just know this is something that’s unlikely to happen, so it’s just something I can dream about. I can only dream about driving a car like thati. I wish I drove a Ferrari.
Milena, this ain’t gonna happen, so just move on…. ok?
Now over to you amigos – What are your wishes? One of my wishes is to drive a cool car. I wish I drove a cool car. I wish I drove a fast car.
Ok so hopefully you are following me so far, now I want to talk about the word Hope.
Just to let you know also, Wish and Hope are both regular verbs. The past tense of Wish is Wished. And Hope is Hoped. Righto, moving right along.
Now let’s talk about the word Hope.
We would use Hope in the present and future tense.
We use the verb Hope when something is very likely to happen. When something has a high chance of happening, when there is at least some likelihood it will happen.
I am going to use Melbourne’s weather as an example, because currently we are experiencing extreme summer temperatures, it’s about 35 degrees, 35 degrees Celsius, and the overnight temperature will be around 30 degrees. Currently, the heat is unbearable, it’s very hard to sleep or even move around the house. You start sweating immediately. Especially, because I don’t have air conditioning at home, so it’s quite warm…. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that it’s a really really hot day today.
Well here is my example of using the word Hope.
I hope it gets cooler soon.
Because I know we will have cooler temperatures later in the week, so I can use the word Hope. And because the chances of cooler temperature is highly likely, I can use the word Hope.
We can use Hope in the present as well as together with the Future Tense. Ok, let’s try another example with Hope. I am going to use Australian Open as an example, this is a tennis tournament that’s being held in Melbourne every year. Maybe some of you are fans of tennis.
I hope Djokovic wins the Australian Open this year. I hope Djokovic will win Australian Open. Or Nadal, if you really really want Nadal to win then you could say: I really hope Nadal wins. Well, good luck with that haha.
If you are sitting English exams later this year, I hope you will pass IELTS, or I hope you pass IELTS, I hope you pass TOEFL, I hope you pass FCE exams. I hope you will pass TOEFL.
I use the word Hope because I know there is a high chance of you passing these exams…. Because, well you are listening to English Made Simple and because you are awesome of course!
So is this all crystal clear? I hope so! Hopefully, this is all crystal clear.
There we go, the word hope again.
And if we want to use Hope in the present to say something in the present, we can just use the present tense.
For example:
I hope you are learning some new words today.
So guys here we are coming closer to the end of the show.
To put it simply, just to summarise, WISH should be used when we talk about something that is impossible to happen or there is a really low chance of something happening, and HOPE is used when we want to talk about something that is highly probable to happen, when we are very confident of something happening.
So next week amigos, I am going to answer a question posted in the Facebook Group, English Made Simple, the question was relating to an expression What lies beneath. However, I think this is a great opportunity to explain the two verbs Lay and Lie, I think there is a confusion between these 2 irregular verbs [to Lay and to Lie]. I am going to include some phrasal verbs… And guess what, even the native speakers make mistakes between the two verbs.
The verb to Lie doesn’t only mean Mentir, to tell lies, to say something that is not true or real. So you will hear more about this next week.
In the meantime, what are your 3 wishes? One of my wishes is to drive a Tesla. I wish I drove a Tesla car for example, the new Tesla car. That’s my wish.
Thank you for joining me amigos, transcripts to this episode are coming soon. If you have enjoyed today’s episode please share it with your friends, because sharing is caring. Until next time!
Hasta la próxima!