English Subjunctive

Hello, native French speaker here

I just found out about the Subjunctive mood and to be honest, I find it confusing. Even if it is not an excuse to not learn it, I was wondering if it was commonly used in American/Canadian English and if it is worth to focus on this verb tense? I already know the following verb tenses: Simple Present, present continuous, simple past, past continuous, simple future, future continuous, conditional (would, could, should) and I’m currently learning the present perfect.

Thank you!

As the title states, I am looking for info on the subjunctive in old modern English or just old English too.

So I have a question about the usage of subjunctive. For example this sentence,

"I hope my future children won't become an immoral person."

If you were to construct the sentence above with God forbid, which tense should I use ?

"God forbid my future children will become/became/become an immoral person ?

Same thing with "I'd rather"

Say you're in the library and the person next to you is talking loudly on the phone. If I were to say "please take your call outside" with "I'd rather", which tense should I use with in the sentence ?

"I'd rather you take/took your call outside the library."

https://youtu.be/6W4szON4khs

It it very embarrassing and just feel stupid asking it but I really need to know. So I am a French teacher and speak a descent english. I teach my students ( private lesson ) either in english or korean. I live in Korea.

I was teaching a korean american student the subjunctive form and she was having a hard time with that part of french grammar that we use a lot.

I was like " yeah I know it's hard especially since you don't have it in english" but she then replied "oh we do but still hard for me in english too".

I was very shocked and checked on internet the english subjunctive mood and I have never in my sixteen years of learning english seen any english speaker using that form as how it was explained on the internet. So I am really dumbfounded, do you guys really use it and I just never noticed it?

I've been teaching myself English for the last 4 or 5 years probably, basically just by watching and reading a lot of stuff (I already had a pretty solid foundation of English grammar that I studied mainly in middle school). Last year I spent something like 3 weeks in London and my CEFR level should be something like C1 so I feel like I'm quite advanced. Anyway, I've been learning a bit of Spanish lately (since I'm an Italian native speaker), mostly thought the LanguageTransfer course, and the teacher, Mihalis, while explaining the subjunctive mood in Spanish, made a few example about how English has a subjunctive mood as well, and I'd like to learn more about it and how to use it properly and consciounsly, thank you in advance!

Today in pragmatics class I encounted a sentence like this: John died before he finished his PhD. I considered this sentence ungrammatical because from my understanding of Vendler's aspect theory, when using past tense, the action indicated by the past tense is complete. Then, since John didn't finish his PhD, I found this sentence ungrammatical. I suggest that a grammatical sentence would be something like: John died before he could finish his PhD.

I have discussed it with a friend of mine and she suggested that this sentence is grammatical because the morphology of English past subjunctive is the same as the simple past tense. I tried to check related topics in Google scholar but haven't found any literature about this. So I want to ask you guys' opinions, do you consider this sentence grammatical? what's your opinion? thanks!

POLL: Do you as a native English speaker rather use the Subjunctive Mood in daily spoken English or do you replace it with the Indicative?

As a result of some discussions I read about the Subjunctive Mood yesterday, I realised that there is quite a lot discord on whether or not the Subjunctive Mood is / should be used in daily spoken and/or written English.

Both sides come up with good reasons, but due to this disagreement, to me it is still unclear whether or not we should use the Subjunctive Mood or the Indicative.

(There seems to be a difference in it between American and British English and I have the feeling that its usage might also differ per state in the US though.)

So, I would really love to get a response from all of you, so that we can see together if more people believe the Subjunctive Mood or the Indicative is most proper to use nowadays.

EDIT: For clarification's sake: "I recommend that he start studying harder" (= subjunctive Mood) vs. "I recommend that he starts studying harder" (= indicative)

I was thinking because it deals with doubt regarding the topic, would these be acceptable?

1.) ¿Alguien hable Espanol?

- Doubt regarding if anyone speaks spanish

2.) Si quieras esto, iré a comprarlo

- Doubt regarding if someone wants something

Are these correct? Can anyone give me more examples?

أحب أن أذهب. I understand this as "I like to go." but I've also heard it as "I would like to go." I don't know how to distinguish the two.

If I'm not mistaken, "قد" used with present tense means "might", but I've only seen in with the past tense (sometimes preceded by laam) to mean "already", usually untranslated.

From what I understand, there's no conjugation, it simply comes from context, but how do I, as a non-native speaker, get it?

Also, whenever I try to search for it, I come up for the Arabic Subjunctive Case, is there a name for the English Subjunctive Mood in Arabic?

I'm currently learning about the subjunctive mood and it's something that I have rarely heard in movies, series, or on the Internet. Just how formal does it sound to use it in everyday conversations?
For example, if I said "It is important that he see if everything works nicely" instead of "It is important that he sees if everything works nicely", would I receive strange looks? Or would those strange looks occur if I used the second example? Thank you.

Edit: typo in the question, what would be the closest english translation*. I need to learn to proofread.

que le enseñes a mi boca is another example that comes to mind (yes, it's the despacito lyric lol)

I understand more or less what these phrases mean but I'm not sure of the exact translation into English. Are they commands or more like general statements?

For example, if I were to say “If I was a fruit, I would be a banana,” rather than “if I were a fruit, I would be a banana,” it doesn’t sound that weird/bad. Most people won’t even notice it, and those who do probably won’t say anything about it because it’s a fairly common and harmless mistake.

Is is the same in Spanish? If I said “Si yo era una fruta, yo sería un plátano...” rather than “si yo fuera una fruta, yo sería un plátano,” would it be the same as the equivalent mistake in English or worse/more noticeable?

Hey guys, I'm ESL and I was taught to never forget the third person -s. However, the more I read in English, the more that rule which is supposedly set in stone is being challenged.

For example we know it's "God Forbid he do that" and "I demand that he stop". From what I know, this is pretty standard stuff and probably used by native speakers in daily parlance right?

But how deep does the rabbit hole go? I've read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (6.5/10 btw) and I've often stumbled across clauses like "if he do". It seems like the -s can be omitted everytime a possibility/something desired or undesired is discussed. Is that correct, albeit archaic? Thanks a lot for answering. This is one of those grammatical matters nobody ever really talked about in school. In fact I distinctly remember my teacher marking this as an error ("I demand he stops" was correct according to her)

For example, what used to be "If I were the president, I would..." is now commonly said as "If I was the president, I would..." for the present subjunctive. How did this shift happen?

I'm having trouble thinking of an example of the latin imperfect passive subjunctive translated into english, so I can better understand how it's used in Latin.

For the imperfect passive indicative, I can think of "I was being taught..." Is "I may have been taught" correct for the imperfect passive subjunctive?

I was trying to express to a friend that i'd take the T home from their house. If I were certain, I could have said "The T will have stopped running", but as I'm unsure as to what time I'll actually be taking the T home I wanted to say that I would or may take the T home if it's still running.

So how would you correctly construct "The T (may will have stopped) running"?

Do you get what I'm trying to ask?

If I'm sitting on a park bench after I've had a long day because I got fired from my job, and I'm reading the newspaper, and a man sits on another bench, notices me, and comes to my bench and starts talking to me, then I tell him to stop talking, and he doesn't but instead he scoots closer and begins whispering in my ear, then I would roll up my newspaper and smack him with it.

Would anyone be able to translate this for me..? Aside from Spanish, my main subject is geography and my degree has been a bit of a roller coaster because I took an interruption of study. I do enjoy my subject and its likely that I will go on to study a masters. Sometimes I have the impression that people think geography isn’t a proper subject, it’s a running joke that all we do is colour in maps. This is because the subject is so multi-disciplinary which is one of the reasons I like it. If I was studying a more restrictive subject like geology I would not be able to incorporate such a wide range of topics and skills into my learning – such as politics, statistics, research, human rights and society. The subject is considered to be very employable because it equips students with a variety of applicable skills. Be that as it may (, I will probably need to complete internships and low paid work before I can progress in my desired career path of conservation work.

I noticed that in English, compared to other languages like Spanish, rarely uses the subjunctive in everyday speech. While I have noticed that it may be used among "proper people" it is not used by most. While in Spanish, using the subjunctive is common. Is there any reason for this difference and is the past tense in place of the subjunctive in English proper grammar?

Taking language classes, they teach participles and subjunctive and present perfect, past perfect, etc. (It can become kind of difficult to know what it is, exactly, when you don't know the English equivalent.)

So, why, don't American schools teach about what verb conjugations are perfect/imperfect, participles, etc?

First: "_____ out that you are 20 weeks pregnant, I would feel more shocked than anything."

(a) If I found

...

(d) If I were to find <-- The book says this is the answer

I was wondering why (a) can't be correct here, and what the difference in meaning is between (a) and (d). The book says something about (d) implying the following hypothetical is less likely than if (a) were used, but I still don't really understand why (a) can't be an answer then.

Second: It sounds as if Kathy _____ really ill.

(a) were

(b) has been <-- The book says this is the answer

(c) had been

I think I understand why (a) can't be the answer. To me, using "were" makes it seem like Kathy wasn't actually ill. "Were" makes the statement come across as counterfactual when "It sounds as if" is actually implying that the statement is likely factual.

As far as (c) is concerned, I agree that (b) is the most likely group of words to be used in that sentence, but I feel like (c) could technically be used. Basically I think that (c) could be said given enough supporting context. Like "Yeah boss. It sounds like Kathy had been really ill before she recovered enough to come in on Sunday. That's why she didn't meet the quota." Granted in my example "It sounds like Kathy was really ill before she..." could be used too and probably would be a more likely formulation, but my main point is that option (c) is grammatical.

Can anyone explain why the book gives priority to the answers it does and whether the other alternatives given are grammatical or not? Thanks a bunch!

So I am currently learning spanish on my own and have been trying to hammer out what exactly the equivalents of each verb tense are in each language. I found a page describing the subjunctive as more of a mood than a tense since the things that trigger its use are the relative certainty of the sentence. This page says things that do NOT trigger the subjunctive include "Yo creo que..." (I believe that) since I Believe makes the statement certain. I would have though it would be exactly the opposite since in english, to say you believe something to be true implies you have no concrete or logical evidence to support it as opposed to saying I know it to be true. I was wondering if anyone has any input on this? Is this perhaps a product of the hispanic culture being historically religious? Belief is strongly associated with absolute religious certainty, but maybe the actual meaning of the word is just not quite the same in each language?

I've always wondered what our world would be like if language was not definitive. In general, the default mode of communication is declarative, and we need to add grammatical modifiers or adverbs like "maybe" to imply a sense of openness to the alternative.

I have always wondered how communication would differ if instead, we had to add modifiers to imply definitiveness. Especially in debates and arguments, do you think that this would make communication more personable and enjoyable? Rather than focus conversations solely on what YOU believe, rather as you convey arguments, you would imply an embrace & openness to the possibility of the opposite argument. Anybody have any thoughts?