Looking for some feedback on the stock answer I usually give to Korean learners of English when they use the phrase "It would be grateful if…"
Quick background: I'm an English language instructor/coach for Korean business professionals in Seoul, South Korea. Recently, I have frequently encountered the expression above in students' emails.
My stock answer is that this expression is incorrect because "it" (the situation/event/action) is not a person, so it cannot feel grateful about another person's actions. Students usually then ask, "Well, what about: 'It would be appreciated if…'"
This expression is ok because it is passive construction; 'appreciate' is a verb, not an adjective like 'grateful'.
This seems to me to be the best explanation I have come up with so far. Does anyone have any input/additional comments in the way of a better explanation? Also, along the same lines, how would you then explain the expression:
"It would be embarrassing if…"
Thanks!
Best Answer
There are two things going on with expressions such as
Firstly, they show the desire to depersonalize the request or statement. It would have been equally possible to write:
But in some contexts the writer might feel that such a formulation is too direct.
The second aspect to consider here is the sentence structure. It would be appreciated if... and It would be embarrassing if... start with the dummy pronoun it. This is a very common structure in English, in part because it enables the principle of end-weight. This is a fairly nebulous concept, but basically it means that longer phrases are typically placed later in sentences than shorter phrases.
You could write:
But this places the shorter phrase at the end, which contravenes the end-weight principle. If we use the dummy pronoun, we can create a sentence, which I suspect most people would find more natural:
Your stock answer to It would be grateful if... is fine. But the expression works if they replace grateful with gratifying.