Expresar sentimientos y opiniones
This was an explanation of when to use the infinitive and subjunctive when expressing sentiments and opiniones.
En oraciones dependientes de verbos como gustar, interesar, molestar, preocupar, se utiliza infinitivo o subjuntivo.
INFINITIVO: si el sujeto lógico de las dos frases es el mismo.
A Rosa no le gusta usar el transporte publico.
SUBJUNTIVO: si el sujeto lógico de las dos frases es diferente.
Nos preocupa que haya desastres ecológicos.
I don't understand this, I can't see a second subject in the desastres ecológicos sentence. Can someone explain this to me. I am sure you grammar guys will be able to help me. Cheers, Mick.
1 Answer
INFINITIVO: si el sujeto lógico de las dos frases es el mismo. A Rosa no le gusta usar el transporte publico.
SUBJUNTIVO: si el sujeto lógico de las dos frases es diferente. Nos preocupa que haya desastres ecológicos.
What is the subject of “there are ecological disasters.” This is essentially equivalent to “ecological disasters exist” I think you could argue that it is impersonal in Spanish, as hay/haya remains singular in Spanish- sort of an “our reality/our world” has ecological disasters. Note in English we do conjugate there is or there are to what follows.
But either way the subject is different from that of preocupa- which is the entire phrase following que.
It is less about having the subject not change and more about what the logical subject of the affected verb is.
In the gusta sentence- the subject of gustar is the phrase usar el transporte público. But the logical subject of usar is le= Rosa. Even though the subject changes. So you use an infinitive.
Likewise in the second sentence the logical subject would not be the subject of importa- which is that phrase that follows as I said, rather it is from the IO nos= nosotros.
No nos importa tener mucho dinero- it is not important to us to have a lot of money.
Tener mucho dinero is the subject of importa, but the logical subject of tener is nosotros, so you do not need a subjunctive clause, you can use an infinitive even though the subject changes.
With that sentence you could say no nos importa que tengamos mucho dinero- it is not important to us that we have a lot of money. But that is less natural in both languages as it is more work than you need. Even though it is grammatically correct.
Get it?
