The subjunctive is one of the three (or five)[a] moods that exist in the Spanish language. It usually appears in a dependent clause separated from the independent one by the complementizer que ("that"), but not all dependent clauses require it. When the subjunctive appears, the clause may describe necessity, possibility, hopes, concession, condition, indirect commands, uncertainty, or emotionality of the speaker. The subjunctive may also appear in an independent clause, such as ones beginning with ojalá ("hopefully"), or when it is used for the negative imperative. A verb in this mood is always distinguishable from its indicative counterpart by their different conjugation.
The Spanish subjunctive mood descended from Latin, but is morphologically far simpler, having lost many of Latin's forms. Some of the subjunctive forms do not exist in Latin, such as the future, whose usage in modern-day Spanish survives only in legal language and certain fixed expressions. However, other forms of the subjunctive remain widely used in all dialects and varieties, although it is common to substitute the subjunctive with the indicative in informal language. There are two types of subjunctive conjugation of regular verbs, one for verbs whose infinitive ends in -er or -ir and another for verbs whose infinitive ends in -ar.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).