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How to use Hope & Wish

In today’s blog post we are going to be discussing the difference between using wish and hope and how we actually use these words.

A lot of non native speakers mix up these words as hope and wish have very similar meanings. We usually use these words to express a want or a desire for something in particular.

 

So how do we use Hope and Wish?

We use hope to express a desire for something that is possible to happen, for example:

  • I hope it is sunny later on.

We use wish to express a desire for something that is impossible or very unlikely to happen, for example:

  • I wish it was sunnier in England

When using hope, we often use it in the present simple form, for example:

  • I hope I have enough time to get to work.

Using Wish however can be a bit trickier as there are a few ways that we can use it. Such as the past simple:

  • I wish I had a big house.
  • I wish we didn’t have to work today.
  • I wish that you lived closer to my house.

We can also use it with the second conditional.

  • I wish the neighbors would be quiet!
  • I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.
  • I wish John wouldn’t eat all the chocolate.

And even the past perfect!:

  • I wish that I had studied harder at school.
  • I wish that I hadn’t eaten so much yesterday!
  • I wish that the train had arrived on time.

I hope that you found this post helpful, if you have any further questions leave a comment below!

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