sunjunctive or indicative

Question

is negar subjunctive?

Answer 1

Welcome to the forum. Please do your best to use proper English, as there are people learning English here.

Subjunctive or indicative

Is “negar” subjunctive?

The answer to the question you asked: No, negar is an infinitive.

The answer to the question I think you meant:

Without a subject change, typically it is with an infinitive:

Me niego a hacerlo. – I refuse to do it.

With a subject change, mostly yes (the answer below points out an exception), with subjunctive:

(I will quote Lazarus, who is considered to be very accurate):

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/negar-que-modo.322197/

Both are correct! The difference is:

• Bush niega que haya un problema con su estrategía (imparcial: The speaker repeates what Bush says, because he/she doesn't want to get involved).

• Bush niega que hay un problema con su estrategía (the speaker acknowledges the problem as a factual one, because he/she believes it to be true)

Verbs can be divided into different groups according to their meaning and the way the usually respond to subjunctive in subordinate clauses, but I wouldn't advice anyone to collect and memorize all the lists, because it'd make things even worse. Subjunctive is learnt through practice and intuition:

Afirmo/supongo/creo/imagino que hay una solución.

Afirmo/supongo/creo/imagino que haya una solución. X Wrong

Niego/no creo/dudo/me extraña que hay una solución. X Wrong

Niego/no creo/dudo/me extraña que haya una solución.

In these examples, infinitive is used for the speaker to state its conviction about the truth of something; subjunctive implies the opposite.

What the speaker means determines whether subjunctive must be used or not.

Answer 2

There are four verbal "moods" in Spanish.

The infinitive mood: (the "to speak" , "to eat" etc. form of the verb") "Negar is an infinitive.

The Indicative mood" this is the "reporting the news" mood. It has many tenses. Each verb must modify its infinitive by removing the ending ("ar" "er" or "ir") and adding the appropriate personal ending which in most cases also indicates the tense as well as the person.

The Subjunctive mood. This is a verbal mood where a second verb is sub joined in a second clause. This second verb is put into the subjunctive due to a subjunctive "trigger" appearing in the first clause. Bosque's post explains this quite well.

Finally there is the Imperative mood, using only the Spanish equivalents for "you" and the Spanish "we" (nosotros) English uses the helper verb "let's" to get the same meaning. The forms for these are borrowed from the subjunctive.

If all of this sounds more like Greek to you, you need to check out our grammar lessons on this site. Go to the "menu" and select grammar, then look for the many sections on Spanish verbs.

If you are really interested, here's a link to an article I wrote on the subjunctive for beginners.

The Subjunctive Mood