Kilo Lingo

Spanish · Chapter 20 · Lesson 3 · Grammar primer

Subjunctive wishes

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

Different subjects or no que at all

The trigger only fires when the two clauses have different subjects. Quiero que vengas needs the subjunctive because I want and you come. Quiero venir takes a bare infinitive, because it is all me. English hides the rule by using 'to come' for both, which is exactly why learners over-produce que. Ask who is doing the second verb.

Quiero que vengas.

I want you to come.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

Read the full article · 5 min read

Practice

Practise this lesson

26-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.

Lesson 3 of 4 in this chapter

Back to the curriculum