It’s Professor Dave, let’s learn the past subjunctive.
We just learned the present subjunctive tense, so let’s move on to the past subjunctive
tense, or congiuntivo passato.
This is a compound tense, and it will be easy to learn, provided that you remember everything
we went over when learning the passato prossimo.
If you missed those tutorials, be sure to go back and check those out now.
If you’re up to speed, let’s recall that passato prossimo uses the auxiliary verb avere
with transitive verbs, and essere with intransitives.
The past subjunctive will follow precisely the same rules, to produce the subjunctive
mood in the context of the past tense.
We will notice that the past participles used with passato prossimo are exactly the same
as the ones used here.
This means that the only difference is the auxiliary verb, avere or essere, changes from
present indicative to present subjunctive.
So really there is nothing terribly new about this tense, provided that we understand present
subjunctive, and passato prossimo.
Just to be thorough, let’s go through the entire conjugation with a couple verbs.
As we said, the past participle never changes, unless a direct object pronoun precedes the
verb, and the auxiliary verb avere goes through the forms we know for the present subjunctive.
Just as with the present subjunctive, we notice that the first, second, and third person singular
forms are the same, as the auxiliary verb is being conjugated into present subjunctive.
And we simply note that the past participle will not change if the auxiliary verb is avere,
but it must agree with the subject if the auxiliary verb is essere, hence the multiple
forms for the second example.
The only exception is if a direct object pronoun precedes the verb, as in the following:
Now that we understand how to form the past subjunctive, let’s talk a bit about when
to use it.
This will come into play any time we go from contemporaneity of action to priority of action.
This is a fancy way of saying that we will use it any time the action described after
the “che”, or the dependent clause, is described as a past action, instead of happening
at the same time as the main verb.
This is the present subjunctive, because you believe that someone is currently talking
too much.
This is the past subjunctive, because you believe that someone talked too much in the
past, maybe yesterday, or at some specific event in particular, but the period when they
talked too much is now over.
Some people are going to the doctor, either in this moment or in the near future.
But let’s move this action to the past.
It is good that they went to the doctor already, because they could then be diagnosed, or get
medicine, or something else positive.
Now that we have gone through the present subjunctive, and past subjunctive, io spero
che abbiate capito!
To make sure that you have, let’s check comprehension.