Herramientas de la lengua
Subjuntivo: Modos y cláusulas
Why do you want to know this?
The subjunctive is widely used in Spanish and presents somewhat of a challenge because English does not use it as much, and in many cases it doesn’t translate. Monolingual children raised in countries where Spanish is the dominant language, don’t fully acquire it until 12 years old. For children who are raised speaking Spanish at home in our English dominant society it becomes harder to fully acquire. For students who learn Spanish in a classroom setting, it is even more challenging because they don’t get early input. This is why you want to understand its uses and then practice.
1. What are “moods”
To understand the subjunctive we want to understand two concepts: Moods and clauses
Mood: Humans are amazing. With some words we can talk about things that are concrete and real and with other words we can talk about things we wish were true, are doubtful, hypothetical, etc. These forms of expression are called “moods.”
In Spanish, and sometimes in English we use different sets of verbs to express these moods.
- Indicative Mood: to talk about things that are real and concrete
- Subjunctive Mood: to talk about things that are wishful, hopeful, doubtful, hypothetical etc.
Look at these sentences:
Real, concrete:
Yo soy bella (this is a fact
)Yo tengo un amigo que juega tennis (real person)
Hopeful, non concrete:
Si yo fuera linda – (this is a hypothetical)
Necesito un amigo que juegue tenis (hypothetical person)
To talk in the indicative mood we use tenses like the present, preterite, imperfect, etc.
To talk in the subjunctive mood we use tenses like the present subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, etc
¡Practiquemos!
¡Hola! A continuación tienes algo para practicar. Debes lograr al menos 80% ¡Suerte!
2. What are “clauses”
To understand the subjunctive we want to understand two concepts: Moods and clauses. We explained “moods” above, so now lets look at clauses.
Clauses: A clause contains a subject and an action or actions. Simple sentences contain one clause (one subject and its action/s) and compound sentences contain two. For example:
Simple: Yo bailo (un sujeto y una acción)
Compuesta: Yo quiero que tú bailes (dos sujetos y sus acciones)
There is more to clauses but for now all you need to know is that to use the subjunctive there must be two clauses: a main clause and a dependent clause held together by a conjunction, for example the word “que.” You can think of it as a train!
¡Practiquemos!
¡Hola! A continuación tienes algo para practicar. Debes lograr al menos 80% ¡Suerte!
¿What kinds of clauses might need a subjunctive verb?
There are three kinds of clauses where the subjunctive might need to be used:
Noun clauses (when the clause acts like a noun)
Adjective clauses (when the clause acts like an adjective)
Adverb clauses (when the clause acts like an adverb)
Don’t worry if you don’t understand what these clauses entail, we will expand on them!
This unit “El subjuntivo – Modos y cláusulas” was created by Alegría Ribadeneira by combining original material and sections about verbs from Spanish411.net, licensed CC BY-NC-SA and Spanish Grammar Manual by Enrique Yépez licensed CC BY-NC-SA.
