Among the Indo-European languages, only Albanian, Avestan, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit kept the subjunctive and the optative fully separate and parallel.
However, in Sanskrit, use of the subjunctive is found only in the Vedic language of the earliest times, and the optative and imperative are comparatively less commonly used.
[1] In Modern English, the subjunctive is realised as a finite but tenseless clause where the main verb occurs in the bare form.
Since the bare form is also used in a variety of other constructions, the English subjunctive is reflected by a clause type rather than a distinct inflectional paradigm.
For the preterite, which forms the Konjunktiv II with a somewhat other meaning, indirect speech has to switch to the perfect tense, so that: Er sagte: "Ich war da."
Many dictionaries consider the past subjunctive declension of such verbs the only proper expression in formal written German.
The subjunctive mood is very rarely used in modern Swedish and is limited to a few fixed expressions like leve kungen, "long live the king".
In Spanish, phrases with words like lo que (that which, what), quien (who), or donde (where) and subjunctive verb forms are often translated to English with some variation of "whatever" or sometimes an indefinite pronoun.
Verbs with a contracted infinitive, such as dire (short for dicere) revert to the longer form in the imperfect subjunctive (to give dicessi etc., for example).
Comfort with the subjunctive form and the degree to which a second-language speaker attempts to avoid its use can be an indicator of the level of proficiency in the language.
Complex use of the subjunctive is a constant pattern of everyday speech among native speakers but difficult to interiorize even by relatively proficient Spanish learners (e.g.
[6] In Portuguese, as in Spanish, the subjunctive (subjuntivo or conjuntivo) is complex, being generally used to talk about situations which are seen as doubtful, imaginary, hypothetical, demanded, or required.
(English, when being used in a rigorously formal style, takes the present subjunctive in these situations, example: "Should I be, then...") Contrast the following two sentences.
: a vrea to want, a dori to wish, a prefera to prefer, a lăsa to let, to allow, a ruga to ask, a sfătui to advise, a sugera to suggest, a recomanda to recommend, a cere to demand, to ask for, a interzice to forbid, a permite to allow, to give permission, a se teme to be afraid, etc.
The present subjunctive is barely ever used in spoken Welsh except in certain fixed phrases, and is restricted in most cases to the third person singular.
In Scottish Gaelic, the past subjunctive of the verb bi 'be' is robh, exactly the same as the dependent form of the preterite indicative.
These irregularities apply to verbs whose stem ends already in a stressed vowel and thus due to the rules of Irish orthography and pronunciation, cannot take another.
Subjunctive mood forms for all the three grammatical aspects of Hindustani for the verbs honā (to be) and karnā (to do) are shown in the table below.
uskīhis/her.GENtabiyathealth.NOMsahīcorrect.ADJhobe.SBJV.PRSbas.onlyuskī tabiyat sahī ho bas.his/her.GEN health.NOM correct.ADJ be.SBJV.PRS only(I only hope that) his/her health is in good condition.ummīdhopekardorahīstay.PTCPhū̃be.1P.SG.kithatboletell.SBJV.FUT.vohe/she.NOMkuchsomethinguse.him/her.DATummīd kar rahī hū̃ ki bole vo kuch use.hope do stay.PTCP be.1P.SG.
Modal distinctions in subordinate clauses are expressed not through verb endings, but through the choice of complementizer - че (che) or да (da) (which might both be translated with the relative pronoun "that").
In ordinary sentences, the imperfective aspect is most often used for the indicative, and the perfective for the subjunctive, but any combination is possible, with the corresponding change in meaning.
(The "-na" ending in the second and third-person plural feminine is different: it marks the gender and number, not the mood, and therefore it is there in both the indicative and subjunctive.)
In Levantine Arabic, the indicative has b- while the subjunctive lacks it: Egyptian Arabic uses a simple construction that precedes the conjugated verbs with (law "if") or (momken "may"); the following are some examples: Tunisian Arabic often precedes the imperfective indicative verb by various conjunctions to create the subjunctive: Ma: Literally: not at.you subj_tool you_write Ken for wish, hope or opinion: Taw for a highly-expected possibility: Ra for inevitability but it's, in most cases, accompanied with "ken" in the other clause: Final short vowels were elided in Hebrew in prehistoric times, so that the distinction between the Proto-Semitic indicative, subjunctive and jussive (similar to Classical Arabic forms) had largely been lost even in Biblical Hebrew.
The distinction does remain for some verbal categories, where the original final morphemes effected lasting secondary changes in word-internal syllabic structure and vowel length.
In modern Hebrew, the situation has been carried even further, with forms like yaqom and yehi becoming non-productive; instead, the future tense (prefix conjugation) is used for the subjunctive, often with the particle she- added to introduce the clause, if it is not already present (similar to French que).
Due to the consonantal structure of semitic languages, and Akkadian sound laws, the addition of the -u might trigger short vowels in the middle of the word to disappear.
Forming the optative:[27] An example of a conditional mode (şart kipi) is Çalışırsa kazanır 'If he works, he wins.
[28] An examples of a necessitative mood (gereklilik kipi) is: Benim gelmem gerek 'I must/have to come', Dün toplantıya katılman gerekirdi 'You should have attended the meeting yesterday (but you didn't).
';[32] Keşke arabam olsa da otobüse binmesem 'I wish I had a car, so I don't (need to) get on the bus.
'; Keşke arabam olsaydı da otobüse binmeseydim 'I wish I had a car, so I didn't (need to) get on the bus.