Emotions in Subjunctive
I'm trying to learn the subjunctive. It said emotions, how a person feels, is always in the subjunctive. I texted my step father, how to say "I regret (or I'm sorry) that I killed the deer" and he responded with "Siento (mucho) haber matado al ciervo." Does it not use the subjunctive because it's referring to a past event?... Or, I'm a little confused. Having a hard time looking it up. Thanks for your input!
Also, I didn't kill a deer.
2 Answers
You could say: Siento mucho haber matado al ciervo or Siento mucho que yo haya matado al ciervo (but this last construction is awkward because yo is the subject of both the main and subordinate clauses). Hence, it is more elegant to use the perfect infinitive (haber matado).
However, if the subject is different in both clauses, the subjunctive would be perfect.
Siento mucho que Mario haya matado al ciervo.
Do not forget to introduce your subjunctive clauses with que.
Franco is spot on and a good rule of thumb is that when there is no change of subject - for example in your sentence, the same person that is sorry is the one who killed the deer (allegedly jeje) then you just follow the emotion (declared in the indicative) with a verb in its infinitive form.
It's when one person feels and emotion about something that someone else did that you have the emotion described in the indicative mood and what the other person did in the subjunctive.
The reason for this is that the important thing is that some one is sharing how they feel, the thing that made them feel that way is likely already known information or is at least less important so it is relegated to the back seat as it were by the subjunctive mood.
