How weird the non-subjunctive... ?
If a non-native speaker of Spanish avoids the subjunctive, whether through laziness, or through ignorance, shall he nonetheless still make himself understood ?
Si un hablante de español, quién no es nativo, evita el subjunctivo, sea gracias a la pereza o la ignorancia, sin embargo va a hacer entenderse a nativos ?
Is there any sign in Spanish of the subjunctive becoming less important ?
6 Answers
I have been told by numerous native Spanish speakers that when a foreigner is talking in Spanish (unless they are quite advanced or fluent) they kind of expect that the person will not always get the subjunctive right, so allow for this when they are listening. Although incorrect use of the subjuncitve sounds weird to them they understand us through context.
Re will the subjunctive become less important.....well again, from what I gather chatting to native speakers, I doubt this very much. It's a bit like us with phrasal verbs; to us they are perfectly normal and an integral part of our language. However, to a Spanish person learning English they are often weird to understand and use correctly. Mind you, with the increase in Spanglish - particularly in the Americas - who knows how languages will evolve in years to come!
Claro que se te entendería, por deducción o por contexto. Sin embargo, ¿que el subjuntivo se vuelva menos importante? mmmm tengo mis dudas, el subjuntivo nos ayuda a dar matices muy importantes a nuestra lengua. Good Luck. 
My guess is that Spanish without the sunjunctive would be like English without modals.
In other words a "dog's dinner". 
Not that I have much of a clue about how or when to use the Spanish subjunctive.
Even if I know when to use it most of the time I have to get out my "500 Spanish Verbs" book and look up the correct subjunctive verb spelling.
That is not so convenient when one is eating pasta and trying to have a chat over a glass of wine.
Faldo - Modals they are only "weird" because they are NOT verbs.
That is the problem. They cannot be conjugated - they never change form.
And they do exist in other languages.
They "modify" verbs and make almost every English verb have 11 extra meanings. Which makes them extremely powerful.
Do some research or ask me to tell you what they are.
Then you will understand why they are an integral part of the English language as is the subjunctive in Spanish. Which was my original statement.
English modals:
- Can... Infinitive form = to be able (to)
- May... Infinitive form = to be able (to) / to be allowed (to) / to be considering the possibility (of)
- Might... Infinitive form = as above for 'may', more or less (the distinction is unclear & has provoked contention in legal / political documents; sometimes expresses conditionality, like 'would' (below))
- Must... Infinitive form = to have (to)
- Will... Infinitive form = to be going (to) / to intend (to)
- Shall... Infinitive form = as above for 'will' (but expresses more certainty, less/no control on the part of the subject)
- Would... Infinitive form = as above for 'will' (but expresses conditionality) / also used as past tense of 'will'
These are our English 'modals', yet they are incomplete and imperfect verbs because they have no infinitive forms unlike their equivalents in other Indo-European languages:
- Can... Spanish equivalent = Poder... Full functionality
- May... Spanish equivalent = Poder... Full functionality
- Might... Spanish equivalent = Expressed as imperfect subjunctive, e.g. quisiera
- Must... Spanish equivalent = Deber... Full functionality
- Will... Spanish equivalent = Querer / Ir (a)... Full functionality
- Shall... Spanish equivalent = Querer / Ir (a)... Full functionality
- Would... Spanish equivalent = No real equivalent... Conditional tense applies
I'm not sure I follow Ian's comparison with English modals. To my mind, English modals are simply incomplete verbs, & some regional dialects do use them more completely, e.g. I myself might sometimes say, 'I used to could recite the Greek alphabet'... I know it's not 'correct' English, but it's a more complete version of 'to can'. The English modals have their cognates in other Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Afrikaans etc) where they act more like regular verbs. Kids learning English often regularise our weird modals. It sounds weird yet still makes perfect sense, because of course they're speaking logically: 'I want to can do it'...
English has the subjunctive, although nowadays it's largely optional, & I'm not sure that it really adds anything significant in English other than sounding a bit posh. French uses the subjunctive much more than English & occasionally it uses it where Spanish doesn't, yet probably altogether it uses it less than Spanish, & one can manage quite fluently in French without using at all (although you do need to be able to recognise it when it occurs). I've spent some time in Northern Africa, where French is spoken widely, yet the subjunctive appears less in use than in European France.
I gather it exists in English's cousin Germanic languages too (perhaps with the exception of ultra-simplistic Afrikaans), but of these I know very little, so I have no idea how it's faring in these languages.
Over the course of the last few hundred years English has become a much simpler language grammatically (although in other respects it has become more challenging to learn, e.g. its huge vocabulary & wide diversity of regional variation), and I believe linguists predict it will become ever simpler (grammatically) in future centuries (some people believe the second person singular regular conjugation will eventually drop its S, and a PhD of my acquaintance predicts that the past perfect & preterite will merge).
I wonder why English should continue to undergo simplification and Spanish not...
