What is the subjunctive and how do I form it?

The subjunctive is a Spanish tense that we actually do have in English, although we're often not aware of it! For example, in the phrase 'If I were rich, I would buy a yacht', the word 'were' is the subjunctive form of the verb 'to be', instead of the usual phrasing 'I was ...'. In Spanish, we use the subjunctive much more often than in English. We use it to express doubt, to express emotion and to express a change of person. There are two main types of subjunctive, past and present. For this lesson, we'll focus on the formation of the present subjunctive. When forming the present subjunctive, we first have to look at the regular conjugation of the verb; the first person singular to be exact, a.k.a 'I' or 'yo' in Spanish. We split our verbs up into two groups: those that end in 'ar', such as 'hablar', meaning 'to talk', and those that end in 'er' and 'ir', such as 'comer' and 'vivir', meaning 'to eat' and 'to live'. So for example, hablar in the first person singular becomes 'hablo'. To form the subjunctive version of this tense, we remove the 'o' and add on the appropriate endings: '-e, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en', in the person order of normal conjugations. For 'er' and 'ir' verbs, the same principle applies, but we use a slightly different group of endings: '-a, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an'. So, for example, 'I talk' in present subjunctive becomes 'hable', and 'we eat' becomes 'comamos'. Next time, we'll look at how we can use the present subjunctive in everyday conversation.