I had a similar experience in French class. I was in school around 1963-75 and English grammar was very basic, no discussion of moods or pluperfect or anything like that. I learned more English grammar in French class. I learned most of my English grammar after college. (I was an engineering major and we didn’t have to take English Comp.)
They could only have it if they were to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I don’t recall learning it at all. The ‘was-were’ thing was a specific rule I remember being explained in eHigh School as having to do with a hypothetical, but it wasn’t called a hypothetical, that was just the sense of the rule that I remembered. Otherwise I don’t know much grammar and wouldn’t know the subjunctive tense from the past pluperfect tense that applies to sexual acts in Boston.
If I were to ask you where I could get scrod, could you tell me?
I’d have some good suggestions.
I find that a little odd, as it doesn’t sound right to me at all; here I’m with Exapno in regarding “if I were you” as an exception to the waning use of the subjunctive “were”, because that specific phrase has become idiomatic.
I myself, despite being a fanatical Grammar Nazi, was taken to task a while ago for saying what I would do “if I was king” (citing, of course, the ultimate authority, Mel Brooks in History of the World Part I: “It’s good to be the king!” ;)) which I defended on the grounds that the subjunctive “were” is becoming a prescriptive idiosyncrasy now mostly found in formal registers, except for idiomatic phrases like “if I were you”.
Jim Morrison famously sang, “…if I was to say to you / girl we couldn’t get much higher.” It sounds grating to me, like a reverse affectation, but I’m a bit of a stiff.
Wasn’t it also Jim Morrison who sang, “Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I” :barf: ?
Not to me. If Jim Morrison had sung “… if I were to say to you …” he would sound to me more like a fifth grade grammar teacher than a musical icon and an inveterate stoner. It’s kind of ironic that there are posters on this board who still accuse me of being an ignorant prescriptivist. There are some very fine nuances to being a fanatical Grammar Nazi! 
ETA:
OK, for that he should have received the death penalty!
This probably has no bearing on the issue but Googling “If I was” got over 4 Billion hits whereas “If I were” returns 1.3 Billion. Interesting, if nothing else.
If I were you, I wouldn’t consider this comment to be of rare formality.
See, in some thread I defended the “if I was to say to you,” but “if I were to say to you” also sounds fine to me. I think others are hearing it as much stuffier than I am. Both sound perfectly fine to my ears. Neither usage stands out to me in any way as being illiterate or schoolmarmish. Maybe with my dialect and friends/peers, I live in some sort of usage divide on this issue that both sound absolutely natural.
As for “if I was you,” like I said, around here, not uncommon. Even the Meghan Trainor song from a couple years back, “Me Too” has a chorus that repeats “If I was you, I’d want to be me too.” I’m sure there’s many other examples, but that’s the first one that comes to mind. It’s definitely out there in the wild, and common enough to be reflected in pop culture.
My primary and secondary English coursework never covered the subjunctive tense, either, which is why my Spanish teacher had to teach it.
I think I read that pluperfect tenses were once legal in Utah, but they had to outlaw it before they could be admitted as a state. 
Having learned the prescription one way, I guess hearing the opposite hits me as oddly as any was-were switch. Viz: “We Was Soldiers” or “It were a dark and stormy night.”
I agree that it probably has no bearing on the issue, but be aware that “If I was” is a perfectly valid construct, and there is no controversy at all if you say
“When I was on my computer yesterday, if I was typing the cat would try to walk on the keyboard.”
The subjunctive kicks in when the condition was not objectively true:
“If I had been impolite yesterday, I would have apologized right away.”
“If I were eight inches taller I could be in the NBA.”
The imperative is formally distinct from the subjunctive and seems to be still regularly used. Let there be light.
In the 888 years between the Norman invasion and my graduation from HS, English evolved to a state of perfection from which it has be devolving ever since. Pretty soon it will cease to be a medium of communication.
It’s actually being used in the subjunctive there, as in "God bless America."More discussion here.
(ETA: Or, wait, maybe I’m misunderstanding you?)
According to Oxford Dictionaries, “God save the queen” is subjunctive, not imperative. It’s short for “(May) God save the queen”. Anyway, who are you to be giving orders to God?