The Present Subjunctive Spanish 3 – Imposing Your Opinion on Others

subj3scaleWhat is the trigger.

As we have mentioned. There are various triggers that create a need for the Present Subjunctive Spanish. One of them is when we are imposing our opinion on others.

Examples in English.

One of the issues we have in English, at least, is that we don’t have the present subjunctive in the way that Spanish speakers have.

To know when we should use the Subjunctive we must, then, understand what triggers it off. Here are some examples:

It’s terrible that…

It’s great that…

It’s interesting that…

It’s fascinating that…

It’s bizarre that…

It’s frustrating that…

Can you see the pattern?

Whenever we say this kind of sentence, we are triggering off the need for the subjunctive.

I thought the Subjunctive was about doubt!

Yes and no. When we aim to fit the Subjunctive Spanish into a box of rules, we always end up confused. (I know because I have done it!)

This is why we talk about triggers and not reasons.

I used to get very confused about a sentence such as:

Es fantástico que hayas aprobado el examen. = It’s great that you have past the exam.

What I couldn’t get my head around was the fact that THE EXAM HAD BEEN PASSED and yet here we were placing doubt on it.

Of course, what I was doing was looking in the wrong place.

There was no doubt that the exam had been passed. The doubt, if we want to place it somewhere, was in the suggestion that it WAS FANTASTIC.

Says who? Says me!

And this is the issue. Just because you think it’s fantastic doesn’t mean that it is. So, the subjunctive is used to show that this is YOUR OPINION on this subject. You are imposing YOUR BELIEFS of others.

For someone else, like a competitor, another candidate for the job, your rival, it could be terrible news.

As you can see, this is a very subtle distinction and it’s for that reason that we suggest that you leave the logical analysis for another time.

Your first job.

The first thing you should do is learn WHEN you should use the subjunctive and NOT WHY.

After all, Spanish speakers do not learn why they are using the Subjunctive Spanish as they grow up. They simply learn to HEAR THE TRIGGERS.

And this is what you are now learning from this series of videos.

There are ten in the series, but that shouldn’t make you feel overwhelmed.

We have made them this way so that you can CHUNK DOWN this subject into bite-size pieces.

We don’t give you every example of each category, only the principal ones. It’s beholding of you to study outside of this series to understand the remaining expressions. However, even if you were to use only the examples we offer you, you would be well down the road to mastering the Subjunctive Spanish.

P.S. If you have wondered why we have been saying the Subjunctive Spanish and not the Spanish Subjunctive, it’s purely for the search engines. It seems that many people search for the words in that order. Go figure! 🙂

Saludos, Gordon y Cynthia.

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