Can Context change Affirmative Commands from Subjunctive to Indicative?
In the practice section of " Subjunctive vs. Indicative WEIRDO vs. SPOCK" I had problems with the reasoning of why an affirmative command is subjunctive.
Example " Quiero que( tú escoger) el vesitdo rojo" .
The reasoning is that the outcome of whether or not the person receiving the command will actually wear the red dress is unknown and therefore the subjunctive is used.
What if you needed them to wear the red dress because their career depended on it? Does this context change the tense to indicative?
Example " ( Yo recomiendo) los cuentos cortos de Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
or " Creo que mis padres( van) a venir.
The reasoning is that this sentence is presented as a fact or with a belief in veracity of the statement and therefore the indicative is used
This distinction between what is subjunctive and what is indicative from the perspective of a native English speaker is unclear.
My question: Why would you issue a affirmative command in the subjunctive with the context of " I hope/wish you do this"? This seems counterintuitive. If you have a strong belief/ veracity in your context can you use the verb Querer in the indicative?
Or how about if you are a teacher, instructor, parent? Can the context of a command with a strong belief and veracity change it from subjunctive to indicative? Maybe you just manipulate the verbiage to achieve your desired outcome. However, the last thing I want to do is offend a native Spanish speaker by issuing a command in the indicative if this is not the case.
3 Answers
You'll find tons of books and rules about the subjunctive, and you'll end up believing that it is the most complicated thing in the world. However, the main restrictions behind the subjunctive also apply indirectly to English syntax, so it is not really as alien as it sounds. There are some excellent books published recently that explain the subjunctive using just a few simple rules based on a single principle, and they work like a charm. The idea is this: subjunctive appears only in subordinate clauses (some of them are implicit ones), and whenever you declare, you use indicative; otherwise, you use subjunctive.
Gramática básica del estudiante de español - Ed. Difusión
The book is published in Spain and it is entirely written in Spanish, but it has also been translated to other languages. This book makes the whole subjunctive feel like a piece of cake.
Beware of rules like "doubt", "wish",... as these things can be expressed without subjunctive, and you can use the subjunctive to talk about things where you're 100% certain.
This is from another member, no longer here, but a great teacher all the same.
Nope, I'm afraid not. You may come across the odd time when the sentences have a slightly different construction or you want to inform people or declare both parts of the sentence instead of just the first part, and then it is possible for gustar que to accept the indicative but generally speaking that construction will nearly always be followed by the subjunctive.
But I wouldn't say that the reasoning is so much that you're not sure of the outcome.
You could just as easily say things like 'me gusta que ella me ayude' with 'ayude' in the subjunctive mood. I like that she helps me. It's not like you're unsure of the outcome here she does help you, there's no doubt but the purpose of this sentence is not to inform your listeners that she helps you but rather how you feel about it.
Try thinking about the subjunctive in terms of whether the reason you're saying information is to declare its veracity or is it just added information to add sense to the information that you actually are declaring?
I like (this is a declaration done in the indicative )
that she helps me. (this is extra information given less importance by using the subjunctive, probably already known, just added to make sense to the first part of your sentence.)
Apart from a couple of *exceptions, declare things in the indicative, do everything else in the subjunctive.
** eg, after si when talking about future events/actions you use the indicative and (nearly) never the present subjunctive.*
Here are a few articles that you might find helpful:
It's actually easier to get the hang of the subjunctive if you stop worrying about unknown outcomes and concentrate if it's a subclause started of with ' que'. I have taken a little time to understand this, - a few year, perhaps- I got so confused by all the mention of uncertainty. It has little to do with uncertainty, it's mostly a set construction in this type of sentence.
I rarely give advice on grammar, as I never understand the explanations myself..
