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.

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.

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:

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.)