As a Portuguese teacher, I hear this all the time: “Daniela, the subjunctive mood is impossible.”

If you’re learning Portuguese, you’ve probably heard rumors about the subjunctive.

But it’s not as hard as people say.

In fact, mastering the Portuguese subjunctive mood is just about learning to express your feelings, doubts, and wishes.

In this guide, I’ll break down the subjunctive into simple, easy-to-understand pieces. We won’t use heavy grammar jargon.

Instead, we’ll look at what it is, when to use it, and how to build it.

What is the subjunctive mood?

In grammar, a “mood” just shows the speaker’s attitude toward what they’re saying.

Most of the time, you speak in the indicative mood. The indicative is used for facts, certainties, and objective reality.

For example, “It’s raining” is a fact. You use the indicative.

The subjunctive mood, on the other hand, is used for the subjective. We use it to talk about things that are not certain. This includes wishes, doubts, emotions, possibilities, and opinions.

For example, “I hope that it rains” shows a wish. You use the subjunctive.

When to use the subjunctive in Portuguese

The easiest way to know when to use the subjunctive is to look for “trigger” words.

Usually, the subjunctive happens in the second half of a sentence, right after the word que (that).

Here are the most common situations that trigger the subjunctive:

• Wishes and desires: Querer que (to want that), esperar que (to hope that).
• Emotions: Gostar que (to like that), estar feliz que (to be happy that).
• Doubt and denial: Duvidar que (to doubt that), não achar que (to not think that).
• Impersonal expressions: É importante que (it’s important that), é possível que (it’s possible that).
• Certain conjunctions: Talvez (maybe), embora (even though/although).

Now, let’s look at the three main tenses of the subjunctive mood: present, past (imperfect), and future.

The present subjunctive

We use the present subjunctive to talk about current or future doubts, wishes, and emotions.

To conjugate regular verbs in the present subjunctive, you use what I call the opposite vowel rule. If a verb ends in -ar, its subjunctive endings will use -e. If a verb ends in -er or -ir, its subjunctive endings will use -a.

Here’s a table showing the regular present subjunctive endings for falar (to speak), comer (to eat), and partir (to leave).

Here are some examples of the present subjunctive in action:

The imperfect (past) subjunctive

We use the imperfect subjunctive to talk about doubts, wishes, and emotions that happened in the past. We also use it to talk about hypothetical “if” situations (e.g., “If I had a million dollars…”).

This tense is very easy to spot because of its spelling. It always has a double “s” (-ss-).

To form the imperfect subjunctive, you take the “eles” (they) form of the simple past tense, remove the “-ram”, and add the subjunctive endings.

Note: The “nós” form always gets an accent mark!

Here are examples of the imperfect subjunctive:

The future subjunctive

Portuguese is unique because it’s one of the only languages that still uses a future subjunctive in everyday speech. Spanish and French lost this a long time ago!

We use it to talk about hypothetical future situations. It’s almost always triggered by the words se (if) or quando (when).

For regular verbs, the future subjunctive looks exactly like the infinitive (the dictionary form of the verb).

Note: While regular verbs look like the infinitive, irregular verbs change heavily. For example, the future subjunctive of fazer (to do) is fizer, and ter (to have) is tiver.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Regional differences (Brazil vs. Portugal)

If you’ve been studying European Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese, you should know there are a few minor differences in how the subjunctive is used in real life.

Strictness:

In Portugal, the subjunctive is used very strictly according to the grammar rules. In Brazil, native speakers sometimes skip the subjunctive in casual, spoken conversations. They might replace it with the regular indicative tense, though this is considered grammatically incorrect in writing.

Tu vs. Você:

In European Portuguese, the pronoun tu is the standard way to say “you” informally, so you’ll use the tu endings heavily. In Brazil, você is used in most regions, meaning you can often rely entirely on the 3rd person singular conjugations.

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The Portuguese subjunctive mood is a tool to help you express the human experience: doubts, wishes, hopes, and possibilities.

Start by memorizing the most common triggers like espero que (I hope that) or quando (when). Once you practice listening to native speakers, you’ll start to naturally hear those opposite vowel endings and double ‘s’ sounds.