What is the Subjuntive?

Question

I saw all of these lessons on spanish dict about the subjunctive and i completed most of them, but I never knew, and still don't know what the subjunctive is..Now im on a lesson that has the subjunctive and I'm completly lost, Can you help me?

Answer 1

The subjunctive is one of the three moods in Spanish, and reflects how the speaker feels about an action.

The subjunctive mood is used to express desires, doubts, the unknown, the abstract, and uncertainty.

This is in contrast to the indicative mood which is used to express actions, events, and states that are believed to be true and concrete.

Subjunctive vs. Indicative

It helps to learn the parts of a subjunctive phrase:

-- 1 -- Look for the subject in the main/independent clause and look for the subject of the dependent clause. So, it's important to know what these structures look like.

-- 2 -- The subject of the main/independent clause will be in the indicative and the dependent clause's subject will be in the subjective.

For example:

main/independent clause	**Espero**	I hope
dependent noun clause	que **vengas** a la fiesta.	(that) you'll come to the party.

"Espero" is in the indicative and "vengas" is in the subjunctive.

-- 3 -- A relative pronoun (que, quien, como) links the two clauses and can translate to mean “that,” but is often not translated at all into English.

This is under-simplified, there is a great deal more to the subjective, but for me a beginner it seemed to help, and I hope this helps others.

Answer 2

http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/subj1.htm

Have a look at this link, this will clear it up for you.

Also, the WEIRDO trick helped me out when I first started learning, the more you use it, the less you actually need it

Study Spanish subjunctive link

Brady, I hope you don't mind that I put the click link in your post to make it easier to get to. - katydew, May 27, 2012

Thank you :-) - BradyLabuda, May 27, 2012

Answer 3

In English we don't use the word, subjunctive, that often, but we are familiar with the use the verb form.

The most common usage in English is indicated by the word, "would." For example, "I would like a Coca-Cola." It is not used as much in English as it is in Spanish. It is used ALL of the time in Spanish. Me gustaría una Coca-Cola. Or...Me quisiera una Coca-Cola.

You see this form all of the time. You will need to learn W.E.I.R.D.O. to find out the finer ways to utilize this verb form to adequately describe conditional states. It's subtle. Don't worry if you don't get it right away.

The subjunctive in English is used much more than let on it seems, jaja. "I wouldn't do that if I were you" - "I wish I knew"... etc etc ...but yeah, there isn't a form specifically for it (French doesn't have a form either for it) etc - sinsonte, May 27, 2012

And, for some reason, we don't really learn about it in grammar classes. We have it and use it, but we don't know it's name. That makes using it in Spanish doubly difficult. - JoyceM, May 28, 2012

Answer 4

Sinsonte had a post just a couple of days ago that had several links to study about the subjunctive. I think the video (Professor Jason) is a good place to start. He explains it in detail. Here is the link to the previous question and you can get the links from sinsonete's posted question.

link for a question on subjuntivos

You can also look at any verb using the conjugation tool on the blue toolbar at the top of the SD page and find all the different subjunctive verb forms of your verb.

It's mainly just talking about a kind of verb mood that Spanish uses a lot to express wants and wishes, hopes, and other things that are not sure to happen but the person believes they might happen. Of course that is oversimplified... you can get the in-depth explanation on the SD W.E.I.R.D.O verbs video. It takes a while to get the feel of them and how to use them.