Thread: Anything wrong with this sentence?

Я желаю моя школа даёт класс для русского языка.
I wish my school gave a Russian language class.

For some reason the English version (родной язык) is past tense. I think Russian expresses this idea better with it's verbal aspects. I've been reading up on the translation of "for" in Russian, I think I now see why cases are so awesome. One preposition can have multiple meanings. Anyway, для+Genitive is what feels right to me, so I'm excited to see if I've started to naturally get the right case... Or if it's totally wrong.

Originally Posted by xXHoax

Я желаю моя школа даёт класс для русского языка.
I wish my school gave a Russian language class. ...

Я бы сказала:
Я бы хотел/Мне бы хотелось, чтобы в моей школе был русский язык/преподавали русский язык.

I wish my school gave

The Past Tense for the "gave" is here because of the weird grammar rules of the English language. For some reason it forces us to use the tense as well as to use things like "were" in phrases like "I wish he were a Superhero". It's called an "imaginary wish" (a wish that can't come true). You can use "I wish he be a Superhero" for a wish that can come true, aka "real wish". So, since you have used the past tense, you are trying to say something that you believe can't happen in fact. For such things in Russian we have "я бы хотел" (past tense + бы) with possible options like "Как бы я хотел", "Я хотел бы", etc. Pay attention that the "бы" is necessary to convey the impossibility. For theoretically possible things we have a few options without "бы" like "Я хочу", "Я желаю", etc. Both of them need "чтобы" and something in the past tense, something that you wish were or be going to happen, depending on what modality you are trying to use.
Here are a few examples:
Я бы хотел чтобы моя школа развалилась и мне не пришлось ходить на занятия (unreal wish)
Как бы я хотел, чтобы мама принесла мне новую игрушку. (pay attention that the verbs look as if they have happened, complete past, perfective)
Как бы я хотел, чтобы мама приносила мне по новой игрушке каждый день. (Past imperfective, every day, a series of actions in the past)
Well, here is the classic:
Как бы я хотел, чтобы ты стала моей. (I wish you were mine)
Я бы хотел чтобы ты стала моей.
Я хочу быть/стать космонавтом (I wish I be a cosmonaut) - real wish, short variant (without Чтобы), only for "be", "become" and "have" (быть, стать, иметь); works for unreal wishes too (Я бы хотел стать космонавтом).
Я бы хотел иметь 20 млн. рублей. (Я бы хотел, чтобы у меня было 20 млн рублей)

Okay, now you can see that the correct option for this subjunctive stuff should be "Я бы хотел чтобы + моя школа давала/дала". Actually it's давала because you don't want it to give the lesson once, you would like that it would give the lessons e.g. twice a week 9 months a year or something. So we have the correct thing "Я бы хотел чтобы моя школа давала..."

Класс для русского языка is okay but it means "a classroom that is okay to conduct Russian lessons". Since you want actually lessons, not a classroom, you would want to use "уроки", not "класс". Actually "класс" can also be okay for a class like "класс фортепиано" but "уроки" is much easier to use and not so tricky so I do recommend that you use it. The trick for a "класс X" is that you have something huge/massive/not detacheable, some kind of special equipment installed in the classroom needed to conduct the lessons so this class(room) is assigned or specially designed for a specific lesson. That's about a "класс" vs "lesson".
Something like: Уроки фехтования состоятся в классе фехтования.

You need genitive with "уроки" like "урок математики", "он приходит на уроки русского язка с опозданием", "он не любит ходить на урок физики"...

Now, the word "давать". In Russian you can hear "давать уроки" for private tution, not for public education. A school or an institution can HAVE a class (specific lessons) in Russian. Actually it looks like "в нашей школе есть урок математики" or "в нашем университете отменили уроки английского языка".

So you can compile the sentence:
Как бы я хотел, чтобы в нашей школе были уроки русского языка.

Hope that helps.

P.S. Note that the "unreal wish" stuff with "бы" CAN be used for real wishes in the same way you use "would" for polite requests like "I would like 65 cups of coffee", "Я бы хотел 65 чашечек кофе -> а вам дурно не будет, сэр?"...

"Как бы я хотел, чтобы в нашей школе были уроки русского языка."

Why is it были уроки?

Originally Posted by xXHoax

"Как бы я хотел, чтобы в нашей школе были уроки русского языка."

Why is it были уроки?

Why do we say it in the past tense in English? I wish they taught Russian at my school. Same thing. There's no reason for it, it's just the way the language works.

i think it's because the wish/desire/want or condition are usually expressed by some past tense. Both in Rus.and in Engl.

I wish they taught us ..... I wish they were teaching us... Я бы хотел, чтобы нас учили (чтобы у нас были)... etc. plus, If I were not busy, If I had time (Если бы у меня было время) - condition expressed by the past tense.

Why is it были уроки?

In Russian we use the formula "There are/were math lessons at our school" for "my school gives/gave a math class"

So we have:
В нашей школе есть уроки математики
В нашей школе были уроки математики (in the past)

Я хочу чтобы в нашей школе были уроки математики
Я хотел бы чтобы в нашей школе были уроки математики

As far as I know, both in Russian and in English, there was a separate tense for such conditional sentences.
In English, it eventually merged with the past (but the verb to be — it retained a separate form in singular: ‘I were’ vs ‘I was’).
In Russian, modern past verbs ending with -л are actually participles (that’s why they don’t conjugate and do have gender) which formerly (before the loss of obligatory copula быть) were constructions ‘быть(pres.) + participle’. In conditional, ‘быть(cond) + participle’ turned into modern ‘бы + глагол на -л’.