The subjunctive mood

The subjunctive mood (conjuntivo, also spelled subjuntivo in Brazil) is the verb mood with which Portuguese expresses what is not asserted as fact: the wished-for, the doubtful, the hypothetical, what hinges on a condition or has not yet happened. If the indicative is the mood of assertion — ela vem “she is coming” —, the subjunctive is the mood of subordination to the speaker’s attitude — espero que ela venha “I hope she comes”. It rarely stands alone: it almost always lives in a subordinate clause, summoned by a word in the main clause.

Indicative and subjunctive: fact and hypothesis

The difference is one of modality, not of time. Take the same situation said two ways: Sei que ele está em casa “I know he is home” (indicative: the speaker asserts a fact) versus Duvido que ele esteja em casa “I doubt he is home” (subjunctive: the speaker withholds judgement). The verb of the main clause — saber “to know” against duvidar “to doubt” — decides the mood of the subordinate verb.

The subjunctive is therefore, above all, a matter of government: certain verbs, certain conjunctions and certain impersonal constructions “call for” it. The main triggers are:

• will, command and request: querer que (want that), desejar que, pedir que, é preciso que (it is necessary that);
• emotion and evaluation: recear que (fear that), alegrar-se de que (be glad that), é pena que (it is a pity that);
• doubt and denial: duvidar que, não crer que (not believe that), talvez (perhaps);
• conjunctions: embora (although), para que (so that), antes que (before), a menos que (unless), caso (in case), sem que (without), ainda que (even if);
• indefinite antecedents: quem quiser (whoever wants), o que for preciso (whatever is needed).

The tenses of the subjunctive

The subjunctive has three simple tenses — present, imperfect and future — and the corresponding compound tenses, formed with the auxiliary ter (or haver) in the subjunctive plus the past participle. Each simple tense pairs, broadly, with a typical trigger.

Tense	Form (1st pers.)	Triggered by	Value
Present	que eu fale	que, embora, talvez	present/future
Imperfect	se eu falasse	se, embora, como se	hypothesis, past
Future	quando eu falar	quando, se, enquanto, quem	future eventuality

The present subjunctive

It is built from the first-person singular of the present indicative: drop the final -o and add the proper endings. First-conjugation verbs (-ar) take the theme vowel -e; second- and third-conjugation verbs (-er, -ir) take -a.

que eu	fale
que tu	fales
que ele/ela	fale
que nós	falemos
que vós	faleis
que eles/elas	falem

Because the stem comes from the indicative, irregularities travel with it: faço → faça, tenho → tenha, digo → diga, peço → peça. Only a handful of verbs have a truly irregular present subjunctive with a stem of its own — ser (seja), estar (esteja), ir (vá), haver (haja), saber (saiba), querer (queira), dar (dê).

The imperfect subjunctive

It is based on the third-person plural of the preterite indicative: falaram → falasse, comeram → comesse, partiram → partisse. This rule is powerful because it carries along every irregular preterite: fizeram → fizesse, tiveram → tivesse, foram → fosse, trouxeram → trouxesse.

se eu	falasse
se tu	falasses
se ele/ela	falasse
se nós	falássemos
se vós	falásseis
se eles/elas	falassem

The first-person plural is antepenultimate-stressed — falássemos —, a point of accentuation that sets the forms clearly apart:

Form	IPA	Stress
falasse	fɐ‧ˈla‧sɨ	penultimate
falássemos	fɐ‧ˈla‧sɨ‧muʃ	antepenultimate

This is the tense of counterfactual hypothesis and of unreal conditional clauses: se eu soubesse… “if only I knew”, como se fosse fácil “as if it were easy”. In the matching main clause comes the conditional — or, in everyday European speech, the imperfect indicative itself.

The future subjunctive

This is Portuguese’s quiet glory. Almost every Romance language lost the future subjunctive inherited from Latin; Portuguese kept it alive and productive. It expresses a future eventuality in temporal, conditional and relative clauses: whatever may come to pass.

quando eu	falar
quando tu	falares
quando ele/ela	falar
quando nós	falarmos
quando vós	falardes
quando eles/elas	falarem

It shares the imperfect’s base — the third-person plural preterite — but with different endings. In regular verbs its forms coincide with those of the personal infinitive (falar, falares, falar…); in irregular verbs they diverge, and that is where the two paradigms reveal themselves to be distinct:

Verb	Personal infinitive	Future subjunctive (eu)
ter	ter	tiver
fazer	fazer	fizer
ser / ir	ser / ir	for
trazer	trazer	trouxer
poder	poder	puder

The compound tenses

Each simple tense has a compound counterpart — ter in the subjunctive plus the participle — expressing a completed action (perfective aspect):

• present perfect: que eu tenha falado — something possibly already done by now;
• pluperfect (compound): se eu tivesse falado — a hypothesis about the past;
• future perfect: quando eu tiver falado — a future action taken as complete before another.

The subjunctive and the imperative

The subjunctive also underpins the imperative. Only the affirmative second persons (tu and vós) have forms of their own; all the rest — the negative imperative and commands addressed to você and vocês — are borrowed from the present subjunctive: fale! “speak!”, não fales! “don’t speak!”, façam o favor “please do”. Portuguese politeness thus rests on this mood: traga-me, por favor [ˈtɾaɣɐ mɨ] “please bring me” is, literally, a subjunctive.

A mood in retreat?

Unlike other languages, where the subjunctive has gradually hollowed out, European Portuguese keeps it robust and obligatory across a wide range of constructions. Mastering it — recognising the trigger in the main clause and choosing the right tense in the subordinate one — is one of the decisive thresholds on the road to fluency, and one of the clearest signatures of the architecture of the Portuguese verb system.