How Do You Know When To Use The Subjunctive In French?
How do you know when to use the subjunctive in French? For English speakers this is really difficult because English tends not to use the subjunctive. In general, French uses the subjunctive to indicate that something is not for sure, or that it is an opinion or carries a subjective emotion such as a wish or a desire that the speaker cannot promise or assert positively. Some idioms use the subjunctive and a few verbs introduce a subordinate clause whose verb must be in the subjunctive. Express a wish or desire such as “I wish I lived in New York.” Since you do not live there and there is no certainty that you are ever going to live there, the verb, “live”, must be conjugated using the subjunctive in French. Express a judgement like “It is time for this administration to end.” Because this is an opinion that the speaker has no control over but is merely a judgement, the second verb, “to end”, will not be an infinitive in French as it is in English. Instead, it will be conjugated in the
