When I was watching a movie, I came across this phrase:
- Why wouldn’t you come meet me yesterday?
What is the difference in the meaning from the other phrase:
- Why didn’t you come meet me yesterday?
Learn English – “Why wouldn’t you come meet me?” vs. “Why didn’t you come meet me?”
differencemodal-verbspast-simple
Related Solutions
"Would" is the hypothetical/conditional form of "will". You use "would" in cases where you are talking about possible future events, and "will" when talking about definite future events.
When I get the money, I will go to France next year.
I would go to France next year, if I had the money.
It's a little artificial, but let's take your examples and imagine them as definite future events, rather than hypothetical possibilities:
"They are going to announce their marriage next week." "I will not be surprised when they do."
"Some of the top executives are going to be laid off soon." "I won't be surprised when that happens."
"Have you heard? She's going to leave that job." "I won't be surprised when she does."
We can take any future example where we would use "will" and substitute "would" if we express it as a hypothetical.
"What are you going to have for lunch?" "Well, I won't have the curry. My stomach is really sensitive to spicy food."
"If we go to that new Indian place for lunch, what would you have?" "Well, I wouldn't have the curry ..."
All that being said, "I wouldn't be surprised if ..." is a common idiomatic expression that you can use anytime you feel that some hypothetical or possible future event is not unexpected.
I wouldn't be surprised if it rained today.
I wouldn't be surprised if we closed that big deal by Tuesday.
I wouldn't be surprised if my girlfriend is upset that, once again, I'm late for our date.
It's already eight o'clock. I would not be surprised if Jim texts me in the next ten minutes to tell me he's going to be late. Again.
All in all, I'm not sure these aren't just variations of the "second conditional", since all your examples could be rephrased as if-then statements:
If they were to get married, I wouldn't be surprised.
If some of the top executives were to lose their jobs, I wouldn't be surprised.
If someone told me that she has left that job, I wouldn't be surprised.
While both are technically grammatically correct, in general, using the past tense for that sort of question is more idiomatic and sounds more natural:
Where did this come from?
Using the present perfect in this case may sound a bit strange.
However, the present perfect form is sometimes used to imply that the asker is more interested not in knowing where it was before, but rather how it came to be here now:
Q: Where did this plant come from?
A: It came from Mary's house. She was getting rid of it.
vs.
Q: Where has this plant come from?
A: Oh, I brought that over yesterday.
The present perfect is also used more often / interchangeably when talking about ideas rather than physical objects, to ask about the process by which something came about. As an example, these two statements mean pretty much the same thing, and both sound perfectly natural:
Where did this change of opinion come from?
Where has this change of opinion come from?
But in general, if you're talking about a physical thing, and you want to know where it was before it was here, the simple past form is usually what you want.
As a side-note, when responding to a question in the present perfect, the answer is usually stated simply in the past tense, so even assuming the present perfect was correct for the question, this answer doesn't really sound right:
It's come from Dallas, 5 miles from here.
Instead, that case should probably be phrased as:
Q: Dude, where has this come from?
A: It came from Dallas, 5 miles from here.
Best Answer
Consider meaning 2a of will (the infinitive of would) from Merriam-Webster.com:
This means that your sentence 1 is expressing that someone was asked to meet, and refused; and now the questioner seeks to understand why they refused. (This also implies that a meeting was not expected, because it had been refused.)
In sentence 2, there is no element of consent or refusal, only a lack of action; so the implication there is that a meeting was expected, but the other person failed to show up, and now the questioner seeks to understand what caused the person to miss the meeting.