French: the (present) subjunctive, part 1

Self-tutoring about French: the tutor brings up the subjunctive.

The following is according to my understanding.

I’m not Francophone, but grew up in Canada; hence, I’ve connection with French. Moreover, my wife and sons are all bilingual. Over the years I’ve studied aspects of French, now and then.

The subjunctive is a verb form. It’s used not to indicate something is happening or true; the form used in that case is the indicative. Rather, the subjunctive is used to express an idea associated with a feeling: the speaker doubts it’s true, or wishes it’s true, for instance. In such a case one would use the subjunctive, or subjonctif, in French.

For example, the indicative:

Il ne conduit pas. (He isn’t driving.)

The subjunctive:

Je doute qu’il conduise. (I doubt he’s driving.)

To an anglophone, the way to form the subjunctive might seem unexpected. With regular -er and -re verbs, for instance, its stem is the ils form minus ent, then its endings are -e, -es, -e, -ions, -iez, and -ent. Therefore, for regular verbs, it can look the same as the indicative in many cases.

However, for irregular verbs, the stem itself is often quite different from the indicative. The present subjunctive stem for faire (to make, to do), for instance, is fass-, while for pouvoir it’s puiss-. Therefore, reading French, one can stumble onto some surprising-looking words because of the present subjunctive.

Yet, my understanding is that the present subjunctive is used a lot in French, so one might just as well get used to it:)

Source:

Kenney, M., Burville, V., Hickox, B., Hill, J., Crawford, P. (1977). Passeport Français 8: Bonne Chance! D.C. Heath Canada Ltd.