Conveying Uncertainty with the Spanish Subjunctive
The Spanish subjunctive mood doesn’t need to be positive. It simply needs to be uncertain, and uncertainty can take many forms, including doubt, impersonal opinion, and incomplete action. Use the subjunctive to express these situations in Spanish; the following sections give you the details.
Voicing your doubts and reservations
For the optimist, the subjunctive offers hope. For the pessimist, the subjunctive offers doubt. The subject doubts or can’t imagine that something or other happens. Like English, Spanish uses several words to express doubt, including, of course, the verb doubt itself. Each verb that expresses some form of doubt must be followed by the subjunctive in order to convey the sense of uncertainty. The following table lists common Spanish verbs that express doubt.
Verbs That Express Doubt
| Verb | Translation |
| dudar |
to doubt |
| no creer |
to not believe |
| no estar convencido/a de |
to not be convinced |
| no estar seguro/a de |
to not be sure |
| no imaginarse |
to not imagine |
| no parecer |
to not seem |
| no pensar |
to not think |
| no suponer |
to not suppose |
| temer |
to suspect, to fear |
You could put together a sentence like this one to show that you’re uncertain: Yo dudo que ella llegue a tiempo. (I doubt that she arrives on time.)
Although the verbs listed in the negative use the subjunctive in their subordinate clauses, these same verbs require the indicative when used in the affirmative.
Expressing impersonal opinion
When you want to express an opinion but don’t necessarily want that opinion attributed to you, you can use the subjunctive to express impersonal opinion. In English, the key word in expressing impersonal opinion is it’s: “It’s important that . . . ,” “It’s necessary that . . . ,” or “It’s preferable that . . .” This list gives you commonly used Spanish expressions that state an impersonal opinion and require the subjunctive in the subordinate clause. These expressions convey impersonal opinion by expressing emotion, uncertainty, unreality, or an indirect or implied command.
Common Expressions of Impersonal Opinion
| Term | Translation |
| es fantástico |
it’s fantastic |
| es importante |
it’s important |
| es imposible |
it’s impossible |
| es incredible |
it’s incredible |
| es (una) lástima |
it’s a shame |
| es mejor |
it’s better |
| es necesario |
it’s necessary |
| es posible |
it’s possible |
| es probable |
it’s probable |
| es preferible |
it’s preferable |
| es ridículo |
it’s ridiculous |
| es terrible |
it’s terrible |
| ojalá |
I hope; God willing |
| puede ser |
it may be |
Here’s an example that expresses impersonal opinion: Es necesario que ellos trabajen más. (It’s necessary that they work more.)
Making one action conditional upon another
Some connecting words and phrases, such as unless, before, and in case, introduce subordinate clauses that express incomplete action. When one action is conditional upon another, uncertain action, you use the subjunctive to convey that uncertainty. In the sentence “I’ll clean their room as soon as they leave,” for example, the main clause, “I’ll clean their room,” is conditional upon the subordinate clause, “as soon as they leave.” Several connecting phrases cue the use of the subjunctive, including the following terms:
Connecting Phrases That Use the Subjunctive
| Term | Translation |
| a menos que |
unless |
| antes (de) que* |
before |
| con tal (de) que* |
provided that |
| Cuando |
when |
| después (de) que* |
after |
| en caso de que |
in case |
| hasta que |
until |
| mientras que |
while |
| para que |
so that, in order that |
| tan pronto como |
as soon as |
| * The de may be omitted. |
When the subordinate clause describes uncertain, incomplete action, the verb in the main clause is usually in the future tense. Here’s a sentence that uses the future tense and the subjunctive mood: Yo le hablaré tan pronto como llegue. (I’ll speak will him as soon as he arrives.)

Spanish Glossary
adjective
A word that describes a noun or pronoun, giving it specific attributes or characteristics.

Spanish Glossary
adverb
A word used to modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb by expressing time, place, degree, and so on. Many Spanish adverbs end in -mente.

Spanish Glossary
bartering
Giving goods or services in return for other goods and services, as opposed to the exchange of money.

Spanish Glossary
cardinal number
Any number used in counting or showing how many.

Spanish Glossary
comparative
A form of an adjective or adverb which indicates that one thing has some feature to a greater or lesser extent than the thing it is being compared to. Example: slower, more believable.

Spanish Glossary
conditional
A verb tense that expresses an action that should have, could have, or would have happened if the conditions were right.

Spanish Glossary
conjugate
To give different forms of a verb according to voice, mood, tense, number, and person. A conjugated verb is a verb that has been changed from its infinitive form to a form that agrees with the subject.

Spanish Glossary
consonant
Any of the letters b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z; the double letters ch, ll, and rr may also be considered consonants in Spanish.

Spanish Glossary
customs
1. The government agency in charge of collecting taxes or duties imposed on imported and/or exported goods. 2. The common social acts and conventions of a particular area.

Spanish Glossary
declare
To inform customs officials of any goods you’re carrying that may be taxable.

Spanish Glossary
definite article
Any one of the words el, la, los, or las used as adjectives to point out a specific noun.

Spanish Glossary
demonstrative adjective
An adjective that indicates or points out this, that, these, or those people, places, or things to which a speaker is referring.

Spanish Glossary
demonstrative pronoun
Replaces a demonstrative adjective and its noun.

Spanish Glossary
diminutive
1. Small. 2. A word that has been altered with a suffix to indicate a degree of smallness, often ending with -ito or -ita.

Spanish Glossary
diphthong
A complex vowel sound made by gliding from one vowel sound to the next within the same syllable.

Spanish Glossary
direct object noun
A sentence element that answers the question, Whom or what is the subject acting upon? and may refer to people, places, things, or ideas.

Spanish Glossary
direct object pronoun
Replaces a direct object noun and agrees with it in number and gender.

Spanish Glossary
duty
A tax imposed on imports, exports, or manufactured goods.

Spanish Glossary
future
Verb tense indicating an action to come.

Spanish Glossary
gerund
A verb form that ends in -ing and works like a noun. Spanish gerunds are also derived from verbs.

Spanish Glossary
haggling
Negotiations between a seller and a buyer to come to an agreement upon the price of an item for sale. The vendor typically proposes a high price while the buyer suggests a significantly lower price, and, through bartering, the two typically meet somewhere in the middle.

Spanish Glossary
imperative
A verb mood that indicates a command or request.

Spanish Glossary
imperfect
Verb tense indicating a continuing, uncompleted, customary, or simultaneous past action.

Spanish Glossary
indefinite article
Any one of the words un, una, unos, or unas used as adjectives to point out some person, place, thing, or idea, but not a specific one.

Spanish Glossary
indirect object noun
Answers the question To or for whom is the subject doing something? and refers only to people or beloved pets.

Spanish Glossary
indirect object pronoun
Replaces an indirect object noun, but is also used when the indirect object noun is mentioned.

Spanish Glossary
infinitive
The unconjugated form of a verb — dormir (to sleep), for example.

Spanish Glossary
interrogative adverb
An adverb used to ask a question.

Spanish Glossary
interrogative pronoun
A word that replaces a noun and is used to ask a question.

Spanish Glossary
market
1. (noun) In Spanish cultures, a traditional market is where vendors gather to sell their goods. Markets may be open or under a roof, and they offer a less formal shopping environment than typical supermarkets or grocery stores. Prices are usually negotiable. 2. (verb) To advertise and sell an item.

Spanish Glossary
mood
1. A characteristic of a verb that indicates the manner in which the action occurs. 2. A characteristic of a person that indicates the overall emotional state of that person.

Spanish Glossary
ordinal number
A number used to indicate order in a particular series.

Spanish Glossary
past participle
A form of a verb that expresses a completed action or a time gone by.

Spanish Glossary
possessive adjective
A word that goes before the noun that’s possessed in order to express my, your, his, her, its, our, or their.

Spanish Glossary
possessive pronoun
A word that replaces a noun and its possessive adjective and indicates ownership.

Spanish Glossary
preposition
A word that connects nouns to nouns, verbs to verbs, or verbs to nouns/pronouns and shows their relationship to one another.

Spanish Glossary
prepositional pronoun
A pronoun that serves as the object of a preposition and always follows the preposition.

Spanish Glossary
preterit
Verb tense expressing a past action or state.

Spanish Glossary
pronoun
A word that takes the place of a noun in a sentence.

Spanish Glossary
reflexive pronoun
A pronoun used in conjunction with a reflexive verb to express that an action is performed by a subject on itself.

Spanish Glossary
reflexive verb
A verb that indicates that the sentence's subject is acting upon itself. Reflexive verbs require reflexive pronouns.

Spanish Glossary
stem-changing verb
A verb that requires an internal change in the vowel before the -ar, -er, or -ir infinitive ending in all the singular and third-person plural forms of certain tenses.

Spanish Glossary
subject pronoun
A pronoun used as a subject.

Spanish Glossary
subjunctive
A grammatical mood indicating uncertainty, desire, supposition, hypothetical and theoretical situations, or impersonal opinions.

Spanish Glossary
subordinate clause
A part of a sentence containing a subject and verb that can’t stand on its own but describes something in the larger sentence.

Spanish Glossary
suffix
Letters added to the end of a word that change its meaning, give it a different grammatical function, or form a new word.

Spanish Glossary
superlative
A form of an adjective or adverb which indicates that one thing has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to. Example: greatest, most honorable

Spanish Glossary
syllable
A word or part of a word pronounced with a single sound, usually consisting of a vowel and one or more consonants.

Spanish Glossary
tilde
A mark (~) used in Spanish over an n to indicate the ny sound.

Spanish Glossary
vowel
Any of the letters a, e, i, o, and u. The letter y is never a vowel in the Spanish language, unlike its use in English.