The Subjunctive Mood

The subjunctive is a gramatical “mood,” an alternate form of a verb that we need to use in certain situations. There is a subjunctive mood in English, although it is often limited to formal written language. Here are some examples of sentences using the English subjunctive:

The agency asks that he be detained.

Mary demands that John pay his debt.

He requests that she play the piano.

Peter suggests that she go to the doctor.

All these examples have one thing in common: in all of them, there is a “trigger” verb followed by that (asks that, demands that, requests that, suggests that). This “trigger” verb makes the use of the subjunctive mood in the second clause necessary (be, instead of was, pay, instead of pays, play, instead of plays, go, instead of goes). Here are the present indicative and present subjunctive English conjugations for the verbs used in the example above:

Here are the present indicative and present subjunctive Spanish conjugations for those four verbs:

And here are the examples above translated into Spanish:

The agency asks that he be detained.
La agencia pide que él sea detenido.

Mary demands that John pay his debt.
Mary exige que John pague su deuda.

He requests that she play the piano.
Él pide que ella toque el piano.

Peter suggests that she go to the doctor.
Peter sugiere que ella vaya al doctor.

The problem is that, in Spanish, there are many more “trigger” verbs than in English. Here are some common ones:

*Note: creer and pensar are only subjunctive “triggers” when they are in their negative form.

In addition to this, we use the Spanish subjunctive in some other cases, but we’ll talk about that in future posts!