# Is the subjunctive dying out?



## fizzycurls

I'm a French teacher, currently teaching the subjunctive to my A-Level class. There's a debate going on within the department as to whether the subjunctive is being used less and less by native speakers. I would be interested to hear what people have to say about this.


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## zaby

Hello Fizzycurls,

Je suis un peu paresseuse, comme vous êtes professeur de français, je répondrai en français 

Le subjonctif imparfait n'est plus utilisé à l'oral et très peu à l'écrit, il est remplacé par le subjonctif passé ou le subjonctif présent.
ex: que nous vinssions -> que nous soyons venus ou que nous venions

Par contre le subjonctif présent est très utilisé, je ne vois pas d'exemples de construction où l'on aurait tendace à remplacer le subjonctif par l'indicatif.
Au contraire, il y a le fameux "après que", suivit normalement de l'indicatif et souvent employé par les Français avec un subjonctif


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## danielle_davout

Personnellement, je pense qu'on a tendance à l'éliminer si c'est possible de le faire:
Est-il nécessaire que ce soit lui qui vienne?
pas possible

Tandis qu'on pourra dire: Je ne pense pas que ce soit un homme à qui l'on puisse se fier ou à qui l'on peut se fier ou à qui l'on pourrait se fier
(exemple de Hanse-Bamplain)
quant au subjonctif imaparfait !
peut-on dire aujourd'hui dire ou écrire
Il eût fallu que je le susse ! ?


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## aoife

im not a native speaker but i never learned the subjunctive in school, i think it is really important to know if you ever go to france, native speakers use it all the time (form what i have observed anyway) and it is really useful to know if you continue your language studies to university level. i dont think the same applies to the imperfect from of the subjuntive.. ive never needed to use it, only to recognise it in a text.


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## DearPrudence

Personally I think the subjunctive is still pretty much used, even if people are not aware they are using it ('il faut que je mange plus de fruits').
But it's true that the imperfect of the subjunctive (how do you call it in English? Le subjonctif imparfait en français) is not used anymore (orally) and even if you can use it, you'd better not lest the others think you're being overtly pompous. Or you can use it just if you want to be funny.

Vive le subjonctif! Que tous les francophones se mettent à utiliser le subjonctif imparfait afin que nous nous esclaffassions


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## keziah

I'm an A level student... what is the subjunctive? Maybe it is dying out if we aren't getting taught it!


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## fpg

keziah said:
			
		

> I'm an A level student... what is the subjunctive? Maybe it is dying out if we aren't getting taught it!


 
Hi keziah,

I too am an A level student (AS1) and I can hardly believe that you said you have never been taught about the subjunctive . You should really have been taught, not just about it's usage but even how to avoid using it when writing essays; if you want to keep things simple. Perhaps your tutor is keeping this for year two (AS2). This may be what he/she is intending to do because in my own experience I had heard of the "_passive voice_" and when I mentioned about its usage in class I was told this will be covered at AS2. If you are now AS2 this is a sad inditement on the level of some of the language teaching in the U.K. and you should use this Forum to name and shame your college/teaching establishment!

If possible could you reply and let us know if you are a 1st or 2nd year AS student? Could you also let us know what exam board your college is using for example AQA, WJEC etc.?

It will be interesting and hopefully explain the reason why you have never been taught about what is the bane of all french language students .

All the best!


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## Utstar

DearPrudence said:


> Personally I think the subjunctive is still pretty much used, even if people are not aware they are using it ('il faut que je mange plus de fruits').
> But it's true that the imperfect of the subjunctive (how do you call it in English? Le subjonctif imparfait en français) is not used anymore (orally) and even if you can use it, you'd better not lest the others think you're being overtly pompous. Or you can use it just if you want to be funny.
> 
> Vive le subjonctif! Que tous les francophones se mettent à utiliser le subjonctif imparfait afin que nous nous esclaffassions




You said something that I really am d'accord avec, c'était longetemps qu'on a justement parlé comme cela  I am from India learning French and there is nothing more beautiful than a sentence crafted with subjonctif 
As you rightfully said VIVE LE SUBJONCTIF


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## wistou

I agree with other posters that subjunctive is not at all disappearing in its present form, and on the contrary an endangered specy  in the imperfect form; and the reason for that might be that the rules when to use it are extremely complicated. What we call "concordance des temps" makes it a nightmare even for us to be sure whether it is required or not. 

Ex:
"Il aurait été bon que les francophones se souvinssent de cette belle forme au lieu que de la délaisser"  "aurait été" is past, structure of the sentence calls for a subjunctive, hence the "souvinssent".

but : 
"A l'avenir, je ne supporterai pas que vous l'oubliiez".  "supporterai" is future, imperfect subjunctive should not be used. 

..and to be honest, there are many cases where I would be at pain deciding what to use. 
Regards.


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## Kecha

I would add to what has already been said that even if we don't use it much anymore (or don't quite know how), we're still (mostly) able to _identify_ it, which is quite useful when reading classic literature where it was used a lot. I would therefore not recommand to skip it if you want to be able to read some French classics...


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## Pedro y La Torre

To the contrary. I find that the French stick the subjunctive everywhere, even when they shouldn't. I came across "après qu'il ait..." for the millionth time yesterday.


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## ascoltate

The subjunctive is still one of the tenses that Francophone children learn fairly early on-- most notably in the irregular forms of very frequent verbs like "être", "faire", "venir", etc.
Now, the subjunctive is not always used EXACTLY like in the textbooks in casual speech, but this goes both ways. Because you have examples of expressions after which people might not use the subjunctive where they're "supposed to", but also expressions which take the subjunctive for many people in speech even though it's not according to "the norm".

To take two common examples from Québec (I realize that these are not necessarily that common in France): here, you will often hear the indicative (in casual speech!) after impressional expressions (Il est rare que; Il est normal que), but you'll hear the subjunctive after "après que", "espérer" (in the positive OR negative), etc. I'm not saying these are "correct", but you shouldn't be too shocked if you hear them...


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## Welshie

The present subjunctive is still alive and well. The imperfect subjunctive is almost dead à l'oral, sauf dans des expressions comme "Qui l'eût cru ?" and so on.

I was taught the subjunctive rigourously at AS1 and 2.



> You should really have been taught, not just about it's usage but even how to avoid using it when writing essays; if you want to keep things simple



Au contraire! We were taught to deliberately craft sentences using it in our essays, to impress the examiner! "Bien que" comes in very handy there and it's hardly difficult to throw in a "bien que ce soit difficile"  into an essay


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## wistou

Welshie said:


> The present subjunctive is still alive and well. The imperfect subjunctive is almost dead à l'oral, sauf dans des expressions comme "Qui l'eût cru ?" and so on.
> 
> I was taught the subjunctive rigourously at AS1 and 2.
> 
> 
> 
> Au contraire! We were taught to deliberately craft sentences using it in our essays, to impress the examiner! "Bien que" comes in very handy there and it's hardly difficult to throw in a "bien que ce soit difficile"  into an essay



Je suis d'accord avec vous,  et _si tant est_ que vous _sachiez _vous y prendre, l'examinateur ou le correcteur _ne manqueront pas _d'être impressionnés. (_Preuve s'il en fallait_ qu'il n'est pas si difficile, _assurément_, de glisser ça ou là une tournure un peu recherchée dans une phrase...)


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## franc 91

pas que je sache


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## wistou

..il ferait beau voir qu'il disparût sans que nous le sussions !


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## berndf

*Moderator note: Thread moved to EHL.*


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## Hulalessar

I think it is more a case that the subjunctive has not been around much for a good while. It is perfectly possible to speak French for a week without using a subjunctive. This would be very difficult in Spanish where seven year olds use it correctly. Even so, I confess I share the view that it is surprising that an A-level student has not studied the subjunctive at all.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Hulalessar said:


> I think it is more a case that the subjunctive has not been around much for a good while. It is perfectly possible to speak French for a week without using a subjunctive. This would be very difficult in Spanish where seven year olds use it correctly. Even so, I confess I share the view that it is surprising that an A-level student has not studied the subjunctive at all.



If you're speaking about basic French, such as that spoken by learners, then I agree that it would be possible to go for a week without using the subjunctive. If, however, you're referring to a standard of French akin to that of a native speaker, then I completely disagree. The subjunctive is, and will continue to be, an integral part of the French language.


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## olaszinho

If you're speaking about basic French, such as that spoken by learners, then I agree that it would be possible to go for a week without using the subjunctive. If, however, you're referring to a standard of French akin to that of a native speaker, then I completely disagree. The subjunctive is, and will continue to be, an integral part of the French language. 

Oui, je suis d'accord, mais l'imparfait du subjonctif a tout à fait disparu non seulement dans la langue orale mais à l'écrit aussi. Je ne le trouve jamais dans les journaux ou dans la littérature contemporaine, exception faite pour des formes figées.


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## Hulalessar

I have selected two texts at random from the "society" pages of _Le Figaro_ and _El País._

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fr...comment-les-religions-investissent-le-net.php

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/soci...alejamiento/elpepusoc/20110513elpepisoc_4/Tes

The French text has no subjunctives and the Spanish seven. Not very scientific, but I think it makes my point. Of course my point was not intended to be entirely serious.


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## effeundici

My daughter is 3 and uses subjunctive.
Last year I spoke with the most illitterate man I've ever met in my life. He spoke only strict Neapolitan dialect. I noticed he used subjunctive many times.

I really think that subjunctive is not really dying out in Italian. Some aches and pains, of course, but it's still very alive in Italian.

My 2 cents.


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## SkyScout

keziah said:


> I'm an A level student... what is the subjunctive? Maybe it is dying out if we aren't getting taught it!



Let's check this first.....
Keziah - are you familiar with the subjunctive in English?
Do you use it?
Do you know you use it?


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## olaszinho

The French text has no subjunctives and the Spanish seven. Not very scientific, but I think it makes my point. Of course my point was not intended to be entirely serious. 

I've found eleven subjunctives in the Spanish text.....


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> I have selected two texts at random from the "society" pages of _Le Figaro_ and _El País._


I don't question the fact that Spanish uses more subjunctives than French, but this is not a valid way to demonstrate your point. If you can't compare French and Spanish versions of the same texts, then you have to look at much larger quantities of texts in the two languages. For example, count the number of subjunctives vs. indicatives in _Le Figaro_ and _El País_ for the entire month of May. Let us know when you finish. 

Anyway, the original question of this thread was whether the subjunctive is being used less and less in French. And, predictably, someone already complained about _après que_, and we got to enjoy two more_ susse_/_suce_ jokes (still hilarious after 6000 repetitions… ) None of this answers the question.

It is easy enough to count the verbs in a large corpus like Frantext or Google Books and chart their distribution over time. I looked at simple forms of the verbs _être_ and _savoir_ in the 3rd person plural. The percentage of subjunctive forms has fallen over the past 300 years, from about 7% in the 18th century to about 4% in the 20th century. Over the course of the 20th century, the percentage has remained quite stable, however. The facts may be different for spoken language; this is much harder to check, but until someone does the work, I would not pay much attention to people who simply claim to have noticed a reduction in subjunctive use. These kinds of observations are completely unreliable.

Grevisse (§894): "On parle parfois du déclin du subjonctif à propos du français moderne. Mais cela ne paraît pas fondé."


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## Walshie79

I did French A-level in 1996-8, and certainly remember the subjunctive forming part of the syllabus. The fact that the present subjunctive is often identical to the present indicative, except for _-ions, -iez _in the plural meant it wasn't too difficult, as long as you remembered which verbs were the exception (_je fasse_ etc). I wonder if this may be why it is perceived to be dying out- it's not as obviously distinct in many cases as in Latin, Spanish etc.

As for the imperfect subjunctive, we were taught that it was still seen in written French but pretty much gone from the spoken language, which is certainly the impression I get. 

However we were also taught that the simple past ("past historic" was the name given to it by my teacher) was somewhat old-fashioned, which from my experience is not true- I don't often hear it in brief conversations, but it's pretty difficult to read something in French without knowing it.


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## Hulalessar

olaszinho said:


> The French text has no subjunctives and the Spanish seven. Not very scientific, but I think it makes my point. Of course my point was not intended to be entirely serious.
> 
> I've found eleven subjunctives in the Spanish text.....



Who's counting?


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## Hulalessar

Walshie79 said:


> The fact that the present subjunctive is often identical to the present indicative, except for _-ions, -iez _in the plural meant it wasn't too difficult, as long as you remembered which verbs were the exception (_je fasse_ etc). I wonder if this may be why it is perceived to be dying out- it's not as obviously distinct in many cases as in Latin, Spanish etc.



I think you have a point there, though I would be inclined to put it the other way round and suggest that the reason its use has diminished is because it is not that distinctive.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Over the course of the 20th century, the percentage has remained quite stable, however.



I did say in my first post: "I think it is more a case that the subjunctive has not been around much for a good while."



CapnPrep said:


> The facts may be different for spoken language; this is much harder to check, but until someone does the work, I would not pay much attention to people who simply claim to have noticed a reduction in subjunctive use. These kinds of observations are completely unreliable.



One can I think only go by impression. You certainly hear the subjunctive in set phrases, but then you can say that about English. Otherwise, the fact that the subjunctive is essentially restricted to subordinate clauses and that subordinate clauses do not feature so much in conversation as in writing, explains, at least in part, its comparative absence from speech.

Do you not also think that the fact that some people are using it incorrectly is an indication that, if I may so put it, French speakers do not think subjunctively?


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> Do you not also think that the fact that some people are using it incorrectly is an indication that, if I may so put it, French speakers do not think subjunctively?


Without real data (beyond anecdotes and impressions), it is impossible to say what non-standard usages tell us about current French grammar. "Some people" using the subjunctive incorrectly can indicate many different things, or nothing.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Without real data (beyond anecdotes and impressions), it is impossible to say what non-standard usages tell us about current French grammar. "Some people" using the subjunctive incorrectly can indicate many different things, or nothing.



I do not wish to get too bogged down in discussing what we may mean by "correctness" except to say that we have the seeming paradox that, on the one hand, we may want to say that native speakers do not make mistakes but, on the other, acknowledge that language changes and if it changes it must be because people are making "mistakes".

In a highly literate society the written language tends to act as a drag on changes in the spoken language, but in the end the spoken language will pull the written language along with it. There come points in relation to grammatical usage (as well as other things) where speakers become uncertain about "correct" usage. That leads to instability which leads to change.

Languages differ in what they can and must do. The subjunctive may be regarded as a verbal form which a speaker uses to say something about how he feels about what he is saying. That is how it works in Spanish. In French however, just as in English, it has become little more than a verbal form you are supposed to use in certain limited situations not perfectly understood by all speakers.

The fact that a contributor has indicated that he has reached A-level studies in French before being taught the subjunctive, whilst it may excite the disapproval of some of us, only reflects the reality of the situation.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> The fact that a contributor has indicated that he has reached A-level  studies in French before being taught the subjunctive, whilst it may  excite the disapproval of some of us, only reflects the reality of the  situation.


It may reflect the reality of French-language education in the UK, although everyone else in the first part of this thread says that the subjunctive is part of the curriculum. I don't know if students are expected to achieve full fluency at the end of these studies, but it is clear that no one can claim to have mastered even conversational French without knowing the elementary rules for using the subjunctive (and this goes beyond memorizing a handful of fixed expressions).



Hulalessar said:


> In French however, just as in English, it has become little more than a verbal form you are supposed to use in certain limited situations not perfectly understood by all speakers.


French is actually somewhere in between English and Spanish, if we take in to account the morphology of subjunctive forms, and the variety of subjunctive contexts. And in all three languages we can find constructions where speakers show hesitation and variation with respect to subjunctive use, and again without actual data we cannot say which language has more of this or what this means. But in all three languages, the overall distinction between two grammatical categories "indicative" vs. "subjunctive" (or whatever alternative terminology one adopts, in the case of English) seems to be extremely robust.


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## Cebolleta

Hulalessar said:


> olaszinho said:
> 
> 
> 
> The French text has no subjunctives and the Spanish seven. Not very scientific, but I think it makes my point. Of course my point was not intended to be entirely serious.
> 
> I've found eleven subjunctives in the Spanish text.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Who's counting?
Click to expand...


Actually, I've counted 1 in the main title, 13 in the body plus 1 in the "figures" box. So, 15 in total.


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## fottry55i6

From what I know, the présent subjonctif and passé composé subjonctif are ever used in oral language, and the other two tenses (imparfait and plus-que-parfait) are obsolete. The présent subjonctif is used to express the present and the future.

When I hear my French teachers talking and something requries the subjunctive it just comes out so naturally, like they don't even need to think about it. I also hear it in French commercials, news, etc.

When I (attempted to) read Anne of Green Gables in French, I came across the imparfait subjonctif (que je fusse, que j'eusse) … I guess that's just extremely formal/archaic literary writing.


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