Hi everyone! I hope you are ready, because today we'll continue to talk about the subjunctive, one of the biggest problems for those who study Italian. The subjunctive is the mood of subjectivity, therefore it's the one that allows us to express: opinions, doubts, moods, desires, in short everything about our inner world.
As you know the subjunctive consists of four tenses: present, past, imperfect, past perfect. In our previous video, on the morphology of the subjunctive, we have dealt with the present and past, today instead we will learn to form the subjunctive imperfect and the past perfect. But let's proceed with order, so let's just start by the imperfect of our two auxiliaries: “essere”, “avere”.
As for the verb essere: che io fossi, che tu fossi , che lui/ lei fosse, che noi fossimo, che voi foste, che loro fossero. "I thought you were twin brothers". Avere: che io avessi, che tu avessi, che lui/ lei avesse, che noi avessimo, che voi aveste, che loro avessero.
"I thought you had a house in Milan". A small peculiarity to recognize the subjunctive imperfect tense is the two "s", in most of the verbs in the subjunctive imperfect you will find the two "s". Let's see instead what happens with verbs that end in "-are".
These verbs, in the imperfect subjunctive, take these endings, and therefore it will be enough to see this example: the verb "parlare", a regular verb. Remove the root and add our endings, for example: "I wasn't sure that they spoke Japanese". But we mustn't forget our irregular verbs which, as you can see, are: "fare", "stare" and "dare" that take different endings, as you can see, usually there is "-a", but "fare", "stare" and "dare" take "-e", the endings with "-e".
So be very careful! In addition "fare" changes, as always, the root taking "-c" for all persons: "I didn't know you made sweets as well! ".
Of course, you will remember that in the present subjunctive in -ARE there was another irregular which was "andare". However, ANDARE is not irregular in the imperfect subjunctive tense. That's good, isn't it?
As for the verbs in "-ere", these are the endings of the imperfect subjunctive, they must be added to the root of the verb as, for example, in the verb correre, so very simple: "I don't know who ran faster among the participants". As regards, instead, irregular verbs in "-ere", fortunately, there is only "bere" which, as always, takes a different root: "-v" before the endings. "I thought they didn't drink alcohol".
So, fortunately, guys, regular verbs diminish in the subjunctive imperfect. And what happens to verbs that end in "-ire? " These are the endings in the imperfect subjunctive, both for verbs such as "partire" and for verbs like "finire".
Do you remember that in the subjunctive present there was a distinction? Very well! There is no distinction in the imperfect and therefore, as you can see, "partire" and "finire" have, basically, the same endings: "I thought you were going to leave the hotel in the afternoon".
But even verbs in "-ire" have some irregular verbs in the imperfect subjunctive, for example: "dire" that, as you can see, changes, as always, the root taking one "c" before the endings, endings that actually take "e" and not, as it usually happens, "i". As far as modal verbs goes, these, fortunately, in the imperfect subjunctive are rather regular, therefore, as always, root, which in the case of potere will be "pot-", of "volere" → "vol-", of "dovere" → "dov-" and "sapere" → "sap-" with the addition of the verb endings in "-ere", in fact: "I didn't know that they wanted to change house". As regards, instead, the formation of the subjunctive past perfect, fortunately, even if it seems a big word, it's very simple, just use the imperfect subjunctive of the auxiliary, and therefore "essere" or "avere", plus (+) the past participle of the verb.
Let's see immediately what happens to our auxiliaries, so "essere" and "avere". Always remember that "essere" takes "essere" as auxiliary, while "avere" takes "avere" and, therefore, very simple as you can see, imperfect subjunctive of the auxiliary and past participle. Even here, just don't forget that when you use the auxiliary "essere", you must agree the past participle to the gender and number of the subject: "he thought that we were the ones to send him the message", so "stati'' because "noi" is plural, "he thought that you had luck to find the right path".
Here instead some examples of two verbs for the past perfect subjunctive: "andare" with auxiliary "essere", the other "fare" with auxiliary "avere", and here is an example: "We thought that you had applied to join the army", then, in this case, the participle doesn't change because the auxiliary is "avere", instead, with auxiliary "essere" we should make it agree. And, speaking of our beloved and hated subjunctive, don't miss all our other videos on how to form the subjunctive present and past but, above all, when to use and when not to use the subjunctive and another very important thing that takes the name of “consecutio temporum”, where we will teach you to use the right tenses of the indicative and the subjunctive, because sometimes you can get confused. You will find all the links in the description of this video!
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