"Quisieron que" + subjunctive
Hi All,
I came across an interesting construction on the introductory text to a podcast by RNE. It states:
"La geografía y la casualidad quisieron que la isla de La Española fuera uno de los primeros territorios descubiertos por Cristóbal Colón en su expedición de 1492."
I know what this means: Geography and chance meant that the island of Hispaniola was one of the first lands discovered by Christopher Columbus in his expedition of 1492.
However, I don't understand why the sentence construction uses "quisieron que" for "meant that", and also why "fuera" is used (which I believe is imperfect subjunctive), when the sentence itself is presenting the subject matter (the geography and chance) as a certainty as opposed to uncertainty. So I'm not sure why the indicative hasn't been used.
Can any subjunctive experts help me see the light here please?
3 Answers
The subjunctive is alway used with verbs of desire or want, which querer is. Querer usually means "to want" to "to love", but it can mean "to mean" and it is often found with decir when used in this way. Quise decir que....I wanted to say that...I meant to say that.
When the subjunctive is triggered by a verb of desire, and the verb of desire is in the past tense, the past subjunctive is used in the subordinate clause. With verbs of desire, it makes no difference whether the event occurred or not. Depending on the context and the other words in the sentence it will usually be clear that the event definitely occurred, definitely did not occur or if there is doubt. No matter which of the three, the verb in the subordinate clause is normally in the past subjunctive. The focus of the entire sentence is on the desire, and therefore the subordinate phrase does not declare what happened by using the indicative.
Here is a very simple example of the above. Someone has just arrived at your house. You might say:
Me alegro de que hayas venido.
I'm happy you have come.
You should not say:
Me alegro de que has venido or.
Me alegro de que viniste. (which is what we would probably say in English.)
I'm happy you came.
The person has definitely come, and he knows he is there. There is absolutely no uncertainty. The focus of the sentence is on how happy you are, not the fact that he has come. He knows and everyone else around knows that he has come so there is no reason for you to declare it.
Hope this helps. I know it is very different from English. I also know that when you are first taught the subjunctive a lot of emphasis in put on the uncertainty aspect of its usage. However, there are many other uses of the subjunctive, including statements of feelings and opinions in the main clause that trigger the subjunctive, that have nothing to do with uncertainty. Your example sentence shows one of this cases.
By the way, I do find the use of quisieron to be a bit unusual in this case for "meant" I would have used significar, but I don't think it is necessarily wrong to use quisieron. At first I thought it was sort of literary as in: the island was just begging to be discovered. Are you sure that there wasn't an infinitive between quisieron and que?
I agree with Ken´s answer, however, quisieron would be better translated to determined (determinaron).
As mentioned: to mean is querer decir or significar. For me it sounds strange to say querer without decir to indicate to mean, so I guess it is a regional usage or maybe a forgotten word in printing.
Hi DilKen, thanks very much for your response. That's very helpful.
Here's a link to the website that sets out the introduction I quoted. For what it's worth, it's an interesting podcast series (even though, at my level, I can only understand about 1 word in 5...)
