El Subjuntivo Temido : The Dreaded Subjunctive

Esta semana llegué al subjuntivo...el subjuntivo temido. Recuerdo que pasamos un poco tiempo en el subjuntivo en mi clase en la universidad y todo lo que recuerdo sobre el es que era ridículamente difícil. Nadie podían entederlo y nadie querían entenderlo. Muchos años después, estoy mirandolo otra vez y me doy cuenta de la razón por qué este tiempo parece que tan difícil. Casi todo el tiempo en inglés, no conjugamos verbos por el subjuntivo. Sólamente conjugamos un verbo en un caso y la mayor parte del tiempo, lo hacemos incorrecto¹. En inglés no reconocemos el tiempo, pues, ¿cómo podemos reconocerlo en español?

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This week I arrived at the subjunctive...the dreaded subjunctive. I remember that we spent a little time on the subjunctive in my class in college and all that I remember about it is that it was ridiculously difficult. No one could understand it and no one wanted to understand it. Many years later, I’m looking at it again and I realize the reason why this tense seems so hard. Nearly all of the time in English, we don’t conjugate verbs for the subjunctive. We only conjugate one verb in one case and most of the time, we do it incorrectly¹. We don’t recognize this tense in English, so how can we recognize it in Spanish?

¹The one case of conjugation (that I know of, at least) is when expressing the first-person or third-person singular possibility of doing something, e.g., “If I were to go to the movies today…,” “If he were to eat a burger for lunch…,” “If she were to go out with him…” Most of time people say, “If I/he/she was,” which is grammatically incorrect. I try to refrain from pointing this out whenever someone says it, which is often.