Spanish: An Essential Grammar

Verbs like gustarinclude the following: (a) Verbs of emotional reaction: A Sara le encanta tu peinado nuevo. Sara loves your new ...

In modern Spanish, the subjunctive mood is far more alive and less avoid- able than in English or even some other Romance langua ...

Subjunctive after verbs which exert influence upon other persons or things This widespread use includes verbs which request, com ...

No se puede permitir que It cannot be permitted to end. termine. Hay que hacer que cambien We must make them change de opinión. ...

No negó que hubo un error. He didn’t deny there had been a mistake. Conversely, other verbs and expressions only come to express ...

Era importante que lo leyeran con cuidado. It was important that they read it carefully. This category also includes items such ...

(c) In the third pattern, the subjunctive is used after verbs such as: esperar ‘to hope’, odiar‘to hate’, preferir ‘to prefer’, ...

language. In the sentence below, for example, both subjunctive mida and indicative mide(from medir ‘to measure’) are possible, b ...

Relative clauses aftercualquiera, dondequiera, quienquiera Spanish has a set of indefinite expressions ending in -quiera, of whi ...

Subjunctive required by certain subordinating conjunctions The subjunctiveis required by some subordinating conjunctions, when a ...

Notes: Excepto queandsalvo quecan also mean ‘unless’, in which case they take the subjunctive: salvo que él insista ‘unless he i ...

desde que since siempre que whenever después (de) que after una vez (que) once With the exception of antes (de) que(see 12.2.1.6 ...

Le pagan poco, aunque él nunca se queja. They don’t pay him very much, although he never complains. Vamos a nadar aunque llueva. ...

Conjunctions indicating cause The most common of these is porque‘because’. This takes the indicative unless it is negated: Se qu ...

Subjunctive used to exclaim a wish With the meaning of ‘if only’ or ‘I wish’, the subjunctive is used after ojalá (que). Use of ...

Verb in main clause Subjunctive in subordinate clause present, future, perfect indicative present, perfect imperfect, preterite, ...

Imperfect subjunctive for preterite or pluperfect indicative The -raform of the imperfect subjunctive is sometimes used in place ...

A conditional clause is one that refers to an event (often hypothetical) on which something else depends. For example, in the se ...

Clauses requiring the imperfect subjunctive This is used when the condition is not fulfilled in present time, e.g. ‘If I had mon ...

Indicative tenses after si In conditional clauses other than those discussed in 13.1, indicative tenses are used: Si hablo mucho ...