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The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it.Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used ...
Many Indo-European languages preserve a subjunctive mood. Some also preserve an optative mood that describes events that are wished for or hoped for but not factual. Common irrealis moods are the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, the jussive, and the potential. For other examples, see the main article for each respective mood.
Middle High German had three moods, indicative, imperative, and subjunctive mood (used much more frequently in Middle High German than in the modern language). In addition to wishes and other unreal conditions, it is used after imperatives, after indefinite pronouns (such as swaȥ and swer), and after comparatives.
German verbs are conjugated depending on their use: as in English, they are modified depending on the persons (identity) and number of the subject of a sentence, as well as depending on the tense and mood. The citation form of German verbs is the infinitive form, which generally consists of the bare form of the verb with -(e)n added to the end ...
Proto-Germanic had six cases, [1] three genders, two numbers (relics survive in verbs and in some number words like 'two' or 'both'), three moods (indicative, subjunctive (PIE optative), imperative), and two voices (active and passive (PIE middle)).
The subjunctive of the present is almost never used in colloquial German (and relatively infrequent in written German as well); the subjunctive of the past is more common, at least for some frequent verbs (ich wäre, ich hätte, ich käme etc.). The latter is used like a conditional mood in German (English: I would).
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Verbs were conjugated according to three moods (indicative, subjunctive (conjunctive) and imperative), three persons, two numbers (singular and plural) and two tenses (present tense and preterite) There was a present participle, a past participle and a verbal noun that somewhat resembles the Latin gerund, but that only existed in the genitive ...