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Castilian Spanish Verbs:
Lesson 6: The subjunctive

The subjunctive is formed in two steps. First, form an subjunctive stem by changing the stem vowel:
With a-verbs, change the stem vowel a to e.
With e-verbs, change the stem vowel e to a.

Add the following endings to the subjunctive stem (these are exactly the same as the endings of the imperfect):

'I' 'you (singular)' 'He/she/it' 'We' 'You (plural)' 'They'
(none) -s (none) -mos -is -n

This gives us the following forms. The position of the accent is the same as for the present. Their meaning is something like 'can', 'could' or 'might':

Person a-verb present:
cantar 'to sing'
stem cant-a-		 a-verb subjunctive:
subjunctive stem cant-e-		 e-verb present:
beber 'to drink'
stem beb-e-		 e-verb subjunctive:
subjunctive stem beb-a-
1S 'I' canto 'I sing' cante 'I could sing' bebo 'I drink' beba 'I could drink'
2S 'you (singular)' cantas 'you sing' cantes 'you could sing' bebes 'you drink' bebas 'you could drink'
3S 'he/she/it' canta 'he/she/it sings' cante 'he/she/it could sing' bebe 'he/she/it drinks' beba 'he/she/it could drink'
1P 'we' cantamos 'we sing' cantemos 'we could sing' bebemos 'we drink' bebamos 'we could drink'
2P 'you (plural)' cantáis 'you sing' cantéis 'you could sing' bebéis 'you drink' bebáis 'you could drink'
3P 'they' cantan 'they sing' canten 'they could sing' beben 'they drink' beban 'they could drink'

The subjunctive is often used for suggestions, as bebamos 'let's drink'. It is also used for polite requests, where the imperative sounds too abrupt. This usually uses the third person (he/she/it) form, because the polite form of 'you' is usted, which is third person. So cante 'he (= you polite) can sing' may be a polite request to sing.

The subjunctive expresses a possibility rather than a fact, and so it is used in situations where something may or may not happen, where the reality of the event happening is not certain:

¿Que quieres que cantemos?
What you want that we could sing?

In normal English this would be 'What do you want us to sing?'

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