Spanish Subjunctive, Part 1: What Is It?

There comes a point in your language learning journey when you hear about the infamous Spanish subjunctive: el subjuntivo. Many fear it without really knowing what it’s all about because they’ve heard that it’s hard. But hey, it’s not that bad! As I’ve mentioned before, there are elements of language that cannot be translated into another language as is. Sometimes, we need to create a new concept in our heads. While the subjunctive exists in English, we don’t use a specific subjunctive conjugation in every case—as we do in Spanish. Join me today as we disentangle the intricacies of the Spanish subjunctive and learn why there’s no reason to fear it! 

Check out the rest of our series on the Spanish subjunctive:

• Spanish Subjunctive in Present Tense
• Spanish Subjunctive in Imperfect Tense
• Spanish Academy TV: Video on the Subjunctive

¿Qué es el subjuntivo?

What’s the subjunctive anyway? When we classify verbs, we can classify them according to different criteria. One of the criteria is the tense – present, past, future – which indicates when an action is taking place. Another one is the mood, which indicates the intention of the speaker. There are three moods in Spanish:

• indicative – expresses the meaning of the verb as a reality:
  • Soy feliz. I am happy. 

In this case, being happy is a reality, a fact.

• subjunctive – expresses the meaning of the verb as a non-reality:
  • Si fuera feliz. If I were happy. 

In this case, being happy is a wish, something that is not part of the current reality.

• imperative – expresses the meaning of the verb as a mandate or order:
  • Sé feliz! Be happy!

We order someone to be happy. We use the imperative in the 2nd person, both singular (tú, vos, usted) and plural (ustedes) because these are the people we can “give orders.”

*We sometimes give an “order” to a group of people we belong to: we – nosotros. Nosotros is the 1st person plural, not the 2nd person. While the mood is imperative, there’s no conjugation for nosotros in the imperative mood, so we ‘borrow’ the conjugation from the subjunctive.

Using the Spanish Subjunctive

Now that we know what the subjunctive is, we need to learn how and when to use it. As we learned above, the subjunctive is a mood that indicates the intention of the speaker. The fact that there are specific situations that call for the subjunctive makes it a lot easier to learn when we need to use it! You’ll see that it’s not that hard after all!

We use the subjunctive when we want to express uncertainty, desire, beliefs or possibilities. As you can see, all of these scenarios live in the realm of the unreal. These are all things that are not facts, but instead, what we think, guess, wish for, or believe.

1. Dependent clauses introduced by the relative pronoun que

Dependent clauses, also known as subordinate clauses, are a combination of words that cannot stand alone as a sentence since they are not a complete idea. They provide additional information to an independent clause. Independent clauses can stand alone because they do portray a full idea). Let’s look at some examples to understand this better:

Es posible + que vayamos al cine.

It’s possible + that we go to the movies.

We can see in these examples how the subordinate clause starts both in Spanish and English with que and that respectively! 

Let’s look at some of the most common examples. All the expressions below are expressions that when followed by the relative pronoun que – that (written in the examples for clarity) require a subjunctive:

2. Adjective clauses introduced by the relative pronoun que

Adjective clauses are a set of words that describe a noun – they are a combination of words that work as an adjective. An adjective clause that begins with the relative pronoun que can either be in subjunctive or indicative. This depends entirely on the context of what we’re saying. 

Let’s have a look at these two examples:

Questions and negative statements

Whenever you use adjective clauses starting with the pronoun que to question whether something is real or not, or when you negate the existence of something, you also use the subjunctive! 

This is because you’re referring to something that is not part of your ‘reality.’ Let’s have a look at some examples:

3. After certain conjunctions

Conjunctions are words or sets of words that allow us to join words, phrases, and clauses. There are certain conjunctions that call for the subjunctive because they express doubt, uncertainty, or condition. These are the different conjunctions that can go along with the subjunctive if the context is right:

4. Conditional clauses – si (if) clauses

Conditional sentences have two parts (two clauses). The first one is the clause that indicates the condition – si clause -, and the second one is the clause that indicates the result if the condition is met.

There are 3 types of conditionals in Spanish. We use the subjunctive in two out of these three cases. While we won’t go into much detail in this blog post about each type, we’ll show you their structure:

This may seem a bit complicated, but the awesome thing is that these structures cannot be changed. If you’re using conditional sentences, anything other than what’s on the table above is wrong! That certainly makes it easy to learn!

Takeaway

We’ve explained the subjunctive and used many examples so that you can know exactly when to use it! Now, book a free class with one of our teachers so you can perfect your subjuntivo!