Imperfect Subjunctive or not?

Question

"Les digo que (hablar) un poco de español durante el verano"

What form of hablar would you use here? Present Subjunctive, Future, Conditional, Imperfect Subjunctive, or Preterit/Imperfect?

It depends what you want to say..Future or imperfect sems most likely to me.. - annierats, Jun 8, 2012

Yes, without more context, this is hard to answer. - Noetol, Jun 8, 2012

Answer 1

Les digo que hablen un poco de español durante el verano. I tell them to talk a bit in Spanish during the summer.

I presume you are telling a third party about what you tell your students to do. You have no guarantee that they do this. Indeed if you have been teaching long you likely have strong doubts that many will practice any of their academic subjects over the summer.

Because of these three things I suggest present subjunctive:

• Two idependent clauses joined by que
• Different subject in each clause
• Presence of uncertainty

If I changed the first verb to the past tense (I told them) then I would use the past subjunctive: Les dije que hablaran un poco de español durante el verano.

Grand explanation. Thank you lachelvi! - 0095ca4c, Jun 8, 2012

Thanks for both putting in context and explaining the answer. Good post! :)) - Noetol, Jun 8, 2012

Yes, excellent! - annierats, Jun 8, 2012

Answer 2

Thank you lachelvi, I thought she wanted to tell the third party she had spoken or would speak Spanish during the summer to come , or possibly last summer. You've sorted us out!