WHEN TO USE VERBS IN THE SUBJUNCTIVE? USE THIS METHOD.

In language school they probably taught you—and you've certainly read that in the textbooks—that you should use the subjunctive whenever doubt, uncertainty, desire, wish, or possibility are involved. After that, you probably spent hours filling in blanks and reviewing scores of exercises in class. Result: you still don’t know exactly when to use the subjunctive.

Though the explanation they gave you is not per se incorrect, it just isn’t very practical, is it? Do you think us Italians ask ourselves whether there’s uncertainty, doubt, etc. before using a subjunctive? Yea, right, by the time we have it figured out, our interlocutor has probably left.

You might argue, “That’s why you Italians screw up all subjunctives, and very few Italians use it correctly these days if they use it at all!”

I’ll give you that, to which I respond, “that’s why we need you Italian language learners and enthusiasts to learn well: so that you can keep the legacy of good spoken and written Italian going further and for longer lest it meets its demise.”

Anyway, the explanation you were given doesn’t work. The best thing you can do is forget it and reset your subjunctive mind to square one—well, square two: keep the conjugations.

Here’s a more practical way to tackle the subjunctive.

There are going to be exceptions—like the ‘se’ (‘if’) exception, or others—but from here on out you should think of the subjunctive as a structure that

WORKS WITH THE PRONOUN ‘CHE’.

Ninety percent of the time, where there’s a subjunctive there’s ‘che’. But you must exercise caution: the presence of ‘che’ doesn’t necessarily mean that a subjunctive will follow. We need some specific expressions employing the pronoun ‘che’, like:

È possibile che

È necessario che

Voglio che

Credo che

Penso che

È probabile che

Dubito che

Non sono certo che

ETC.

Yes! You already know these expressions! They’re the ones involving possibility, probability, desire, wish, uncertainty, etc. except now you’re looking at them through different lenses: the ‘che’ lenses rather than the mood lenses. And that’s exactly what Italians do.

That’s why Italian kids in elementary school are taught to always include the word ‘che’ when conjugating verbs in the subjunctive. We don’t just do that to distinguish forms that look and sound like the ‘indicativo presente’, but we also do it to remind ourselves that ‘che’ is a verb’s best friend in the subjunctive mood.

So if we take a verb in the ‘presente congiuntivo’—oh, and by the way, you should always conjugate aloud. Don’t ever do it mentally—do not conjugate it like this:

Giocare

Io giochi

Tu giochi

Lui/lei giochi

Noi giochiamo

Voi giochiate

Loro giochino

Or even worse, like this (I bet that's what you do):

Giocare

Giochi

Giochi

Giochi

Giochiamo

Giochiate

Giochino

But always, always conjugate verbs in the subjunctive mood like this:

Giocare

Che io giochi

Che tu giochi

Che lui/lei giochi

Che noi giochiamo

Che voi giochiate

Che loro giochino

Always include the pronoun ‘che’ when you conjugate a verb in the subjunctive  mood—and in general, always include the subject pronouns (‘io’, ‘tu’, ‘lui/lei’, etc.) every time you conjugate a verb in any tenses or moods.

The upshot is that with this simple and practical trick, you’re getting used to associating two structures that are strictly related. From now on you’re always going to see the relationship between ‘che’ and the subjunctive. On top of that, now you’re finally going to see them as part of the same word group within a sentence.

This is also going to influence the way you read or say a ‘che’ + subjunctive type of sentence, but this is stuff for another article.

I hope at this point you’re less confused about when to use the subjunctive in Italian. Are you still going to make mistakes? Of course you are! We all do. But you’re also going to think faster, get stuck a lot less, and get your confidence back about using subjunctives. Besides, with this method you’re statistically reducing the likelihood of using the subjunctive wrong.

And this is The JP Method.

Thanks for reading! Keep Learning!