Cuando and the subjunctive

Question

In a letter from the Census I saw "Cuando reciba su formulario..." and realized there must be more to the subjunctive than just the WEIRDO acronym. It makes sense, since I haven't received it and might not. But this should be explained in the reference article about the subjunctive. But in another reference article I see a sample sentence "Cuando tengo 50 años...". Is this correct? Should it be "Cuando tenga 50 años..."?

Answer 1

Cuando tengo 50 años... what else?

You can use cuando+indicative, so the question is not if cuando tengo or cuando tenga is right, but if they mean the same.The answert to that would be they don´t, but to detect if you´re using the right mood you have to take into acount the whole context and meaning of the enunciation.

For instance, Cuando tengo 50 años no hago lo mismo que cuando tengo 60 is a grammatically correct sentence to express what people of 50 or 60 usually do.

Cuando tenga 50 escalaré el Aconcagua is a grammatically correct sentence using subjunctive.But, Cuando tengo 50 escalaré.... is not, because you need subjunctive mood to express a conditional clause.

Hope it helps.

great as ususal:) - 00494d19, Mar 10, 2010

Answer 2

Thanks, Mediterrunio. I was trying to shorten my post but ended up making it unclear. Here are the two complete sentences I was talking about. 1) Cuando reciba su formulario del Censo del 2010, visite 2010census.gov para obtener ayuda sobre cómo completario. 2) Cuando tengo 50 años, hubiera viajado por todo el mundo.