The Latin Subjunctive: amet, amaret, sit, esset

English still has a subjunctive, but it is down to a handful of fossils: if I were you, I insist that he go, God save the King. Latin's is fully alive and doing an enormous share of the work. Purpose, result, wishes, orders, doubts, indirect questions: most of what a Latin subordinate clause wants to say, it says in the subjunctive. You will not get through a page of Caesar without meeting several.

This article covers the two tenses you need first and the three jobs the subjunctive does when it stands alone in a main clause. What it does inside subordinate clauses is the next article's business.

It is a mood, not a tense

Latin verbs carry three moods. The indicative states a fact: venit, he comes. The imperative gives a direct order: veni, come. The subjunctive covers everything that is not being asserted as fact: what should happen, what might happen, what someone intends, what is being wished for.

That is why a subjunctive has no fixed English translation, and why hunting for one is a waste of effort. Veniat can be let him come, may he come, so that he may come, or nothing visible in the English at all, depending entirely on the clause it sits in. Learn the form; then read the clause.

The present subjunctive: change the vowel

Look at what happened rather than at the endings. The first conjugation had an -a- and now has an -e-. Everything else had something else and now has an -a-. That swap is the whole rule, and it is worth holding it in that shape because the swap is what your eye has to catch when reading.

The endings themselves are the ordinary personal endings from the verb endings article, with one change: -m instead of -o in the first person singular.

The irregulars are a small enough block to learn outright:

Fero needs no line of its own: it is third conjugation and behaves, giving feram, feras, ferat. Do is on the list for recognition rather than difficulty. Its present subjunctive is entirely regular, swapping the -a- for an -e- exactly as amem does. What is odd about do is the rest of its paradigm: its stem vowel is short almost everywhere (dare, damus, datis), where the first conjugation otherwise has a long one, which is why the verb feels wrong-footed when you meet it in a text.

The imperfect subjunctive: take the infinitive

This is the best-behaved form in the entire language. Take the present active infinitive exactly as the dictionary prints it and add -m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt.

The rule holds for every verb with a present active infinitive, irregulars included: their infinitives are the irregular bit, and the rule simply uses them as they stand. Deponents have no active infinitive to take, so they borrow the shape of the active infinitive they would have had (sequi behaves as though it were sequere) and then add the passive endings. If you can say the infinitive you can build the imperfect subjunctive, and if you meet a form that looks like an infinitive with a personal ending stuck on the back, that is exactly what it is.

An older alternative to essem is forem, which survives in poetry and in Tacitus and means the same thing.

Passive and deponent forms

Swap in the passive endings the passive article sets out, -r, -ris, -tur, -mur, -mini, -ntur:

Deponent verbs look passive and mean active, as always. Present: sequar, sequaris, sequatur, loquar, patiar, arbitrer. Imperfect: restore the active shape the infinitive would have had (sequi behaves as though it were sequere) and add the passive endings, giving sequerer, sequereris, sequeretur, plus loquerer, paterer, morerer, uterer.

Three things it does on its own

Most subjunctives you meet sit in subordinate clauses. But a subjunctive standing in a main clause is doing one of three jobs, and Roman writers use all three constantly.

Jussive and hortatory: ordering someone who is not in front of you

The imperative orders the person you are talking to. For let us, let him and let them, Latin has no imperative, so it uses the present subjunctive:

Eamus. Let us go.

Videamus quid faciat rex. Let us see what the king is doing.

Veniat statim. Let him come at once.

Audiant omnes. Let them all listen.

First person plural is traditionally called hortatory and third person jussive. It is the same form doing the same thing, so the labels are worth recognising and not worth arguing about.

The negative is ne, not non:

Ne eamus. Let us not go.

Ne veniat. Let him not come.

For a prohibition addressed to you, classical Latin prefers ne plus the perfect subjunctive (ne dixeris, do not say that) or noli plus an infinitive (noli dicere) over a bare ne dicas. The perfect subjunctive is a later chapter's problem; recognise the pattern for now.

Optative: wishing

The subjunctive makes wishes, and the tense tells you whether the wish still stands a chance.

Utinam veniat! May he come! (he still might)

Utinam adesset! If only he were here! (he is not)

Present subjunctive is a wish for the future that could yet happen; imperfect subjunctive is a wish about the present that is already lost. Utinam is the usual signpost but the Romans dropped it happily: di te ament, may the gods love you, is a stock good wish with no utinam anywhere near it. The negative is utinam ne.

Deliberative: asking what on earth to do

A question that is not requesting information but asking what ought to be done.

Quid faciam? What am I to do?

Quid dicam? What am I supposed to say?

Quo eamus? Where are we to go?

Quid facerem? What was I to do?

Present subjunctive for a present dilemma, imperfect for a past one. Note that the negative here is non, not ne: quid non faciam?. That is the one corner of the main-clause subjunctive where ne is not the answer, which is exactly the sort of detail that catches people who have just learned the rule.

There is a fourth use, the potential subjunctive, which softens a statement into a possibility: dicat aliquis, someone might say; velim, I should like. It is common in Cicero and worth recognising, but you do not need to produce it.

Spotting one in reading

Three habits, in order of usefulness.

Read the conjunction first. Some conjunctions settle it outright: ne, quin and purpose quo (quo facilius, so that more easily) always take a subjunctive, so the mood is decided before you reach the verb. Others only tilt the odds: ut, cum, dum and priusquam take an indicative or a subjunctive depending on what the clause is doing, and ut with an indicative simply means as or when rather than so that.

Check the vowel. This is where the first conjugation bites, because the change is so small:

Know the one real ambiguity. In the third and fourth conjugations, the first person singular present subjunctive and the first person singular future indicative are identical. Ducam is both I shall lead and let me lead; audiam is both. Nothing in the form settles it, and nothing ever will: only the clause can.

Worse, the future and pluperfect article already warned you that dicit and dicet differ by one letter. Now dicat joins the queue:

Read that table until it bores you. Those three forms are responsible for more misread Latin than anything else in the verb system.

The imperfect subjunctive, mercifully, is ambiguous with nothing. If it looks like an infinitive wearing a personal ending, it is one.

What to take away

• The subjunctive is a mood, not a tense, and it has no fixed English translation.
• Present subjunctive: first conjugation swaps -a- for -e- (amet), everything else takes -a- (habeat, ducat, capiat, audiat).
• Learn sim, possim, velim, eam, fiam and dem as a block.
• Imperfect subjunctive: infinitive plus -m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt, for every verb with a present active infinitive. Deponents use the active infinitive they would have had.
• On its own it orders (eamus, veniat), wishes (utinam veniat) or deliberates (quid faciam).
• The negative is ne for orders and wishes, non for deliberative questions.
• Dicit, dicet, dicat: fact, future, subjunctive. One vowel between them.

Next: the two conjunctions that account for most of the subjunctives on any given page, ut and cum, and the rule that decides which tense of subjunctive follows which main verb.