Congiuntivo (Subjunctive) in Italian

Italian
1 answer

Ciao 😀

The congiuntivo, one of the hardest conjugations in Italian. But I'll make it easy for you!

The subjunctive tense is a conjugation that even Italian native speakers struggle with and the reason is that sometimes it's difficult to remember how to conjugate it.

But when do you use it? Mostly it's used when it comes to thoughts, opinions, beliefs, hopes etc. therefore it's used with verbs such as

Credere To believe

Pensare To think

Sperare To hope

Supporre To suppose

and sometimes even

Volere To want

All verbs have it but since in many cases using the present simple is something that many Italians do, you can take your time learning them. The most important one is "sia" which is the subjunctive form of "è" which means "is".

Penso che sia una bella idea. I think it is a good idea.

Spero che non sia lontano. I hope it is not far away.

This is the most common one and the one you should use almost all the time. When it comes to others verbs like "parlare", using the subjunctive may not always be a good choice.

Pensi che parli male. Do you think that I, you, he, she speak/s badly?

Probably you noticed it yourself why it's not always a good choice. The first three conjugations (I, you, he/she/it) always have the same verb so it highly depends on the contest and often we need to use the present simple or specify who does what.

Another problem with this tense is that conjugating it can be confusing and you should often go and look for each verb you want or need to use. But as I said, they are not as important as many think.

Feel free to practice even more with the exercises below!

Your answer

person_add Register to answer