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The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it.Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used ...
The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
1 In modern usage, the imperfect indicative usually replaces the imperfect subjunctive in this type of sentence. The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
For many German tenses, the verb itself is locked in a non-varying form of the infinitive or past participle (which normally starts with ge-) that is the same regardless of the subject, and then joined to an auxiliary verb that is conjugated. This is similar to English grammar, though the primary verb is normally placed at the end of the clause.
The future tense was probably rendered using the subjunctive mood and/or with desiderative verbs. Other tenses were derived in the history of the individual languages through various means, such as periphrastic constructions. There were two voices, active and passive, the latter deriving from the PIE mediopassive voice. The passive existed only ...
In the German language, the jussive mood is expressed using the present subjunctive (named Konjunktiv I or Möglichkeitsform I in German). It is typical of formal documents or religious texts, such as the Bible. Because it was more common in past centuries, it has often survived in proverbs:
It is the most important tense in German. The Present tense is mainly used for simple present, present progressive, as well as for future. It is also used for historical past. Example: Ich kaufe das Auto. ("I buy the car") Preterite (Präteritum, in older works Imperfekt) – It is the past-conjugated form of the infinitive.
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory.
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