In the twenty-second class of the Latin from Scratch course, we’ll study the first tense in the subjunctive mood: the present subjunctive in the active voice.
I explain everything in the following video (⏳ 07m 58s ⌛):
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Morphology of the Latin present subjunctive
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It is quite similar to the morphology you might know from Romance languages:
- present stem
- present subjunctive morpheme ē/ā (see below)
- active endings
The morpheme will be:
- ē in the 1st conjugation
- ā in the rest of conjugations
The result is the following table:
| 1st conjugation | 2nd conjugation | 3rd conjugation | mixed conjugation | 4th conjugation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| amem ames amet amemus ametis ament | moneam moneas moneat moneamus moneatis moneant | ducam ducas ducat ducamus ducatis ducant | capiam capias capiat capiamus capiatis capiant | audiam audias audiat audiamus audiatis audiant |
Please notice that the 1st person singular in the 3rd, mixed and 4th conjugations are identical to the corresponding future indicative.
Present subjunctive of the verb sum
In the present subjunctive the verb sum has an irregular stem si‑, but on top of it we just add the active endings (no morphemes) in a completely regular way:
sim
sis
sit
simus
sitis
sint
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Translation of the present subjunctive into English
Since English has almost no subjunctive mood at all, it would be quite hard to understand and learn the difference between the present indicative and the present subjunctive.
Therefore I don’t recommend obsessing over how to use the subjunctive. Our only mission (at least until you’re quite good at Latin) is to translate Latin into English, so we really don’t need to know when Latin uses subjunctive instead of indicative.
In any case, quite soon we will see that most of the times tenses in the subjunctive mood appear in quite specific constructions and structures that we’ll learn and master.
For now, let’s go to the next tense!
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