It’s Professor Dave, let’s learn the imperfect subjunctive tense.
We’ve learned about present subjunctive and past subjunctive, as well as the sequence
of tenses.
During that lesson, we saw that any time there is contemporaneous action, or action in the
subordinate clause happening at the same time as the main clause, whenever the action in
the subordinate clause stems from a secondary or historical tense, we will need to switch
from the present subjunctive to the imperfect subjunctive, or imperfetto congiuntivo.
So let’s learn how to use this tense now, which will be a great one to help you sound
really smart when using the subjunctive mood.
First, what exactly is the imperfect subjunctive?
Well let’s look at two sentences in English.
First, one using present subjunctive.
I hope that you are going.
This is contemporaneous action in the present.
I hope right now, and you are going right now.
Now look at this one.
I was hoping that you were going.
This is still contemporaneous action, but the main clause is historical.
I was hoping.
This tense triggers the use of the imperfect subjunctive, that you were going.
Now that we understand the purpose of the imperfect subjunctive, let’s learn how to form it.
Luckily, this is not too difficult, we will just take infinitives, remove RE, and add
a particular ending which is easy to identify.
Let’s go through all the forms for one verb from each conjugation.
We will notice that the main difference from the present subjunctive is that the three
singular forms are no longer all identical, but rather the third person singular has changed slightly.
Also, the third person plural just adds RO to the singular form.
And we can identify this tense from the double S found in most of the forms.
So the tense is fairly easy to memorize, and it’s very impressive to hear, as Italians
do indeed use this tense quite a bit, especially while pontificating or discussing lofty ideas,
so don’t hesitate to use it in conversation.
As we might expect, there are some irregulars, and they are the usual suspects.
Let’s just go over all the forms for one verb, essere, and the rest of them will be intuitive.
Now let’s just go over the first person singular for a few more verbs.
Now that we have this down, let’s see how this works.
We can look at two examples of a particular sentence, the first with contemporaneous action
in the primary tense, or the present, and therefore using present subjunctive, and the
other with contemporaneous action in the historical tense, or the past, and therefore using imperfect
subjunctive.
So this is a very literal way to use the imperfect subjunctive.
Another usage for this tense is to express regret, or desire for something that is unattainable
or unlikely to happen.
Here are some examples.
And that’s it for the imperfect subjunctive.
There is just one more subjunctive tense to learn, but before we wrap things up, let’s
check comprehension.