Spanish II: Forming the Past Subjunctive: Verb Rules

There is another subjunctive tense to use when the subjunctive is necessary but the sentence is in a past tense. Technically, it is called the imperfect subjunctive, but that title is unnecessarily confusing. There is only one way to put the subjunctive in the past tense, and because it's based on the preterit tense, it's more fitting to call it the “past subjunctive.” Before you can learn how the past subjunctive is used in sentences, however, you must first learn to create the forms.

All verbs, without exception, follow the same rules for forming the past subjunctive; thus, the past subjunctive tense has no irregular verbs. Although that sounds simple, there is one difficulty: The first rule is to start with the third person plural form of the preterit. There are a plethora of verbs that are irregular in the preterit, but once you've remembered the ellos form, you can easily turn the preterit into the past subjunctive.

All verbs end in -ron in the third person preterit form. Remove the -ron and add the endings in Table 1 .

TABLE 1

Past Subjunctive Verb Endings

Subject	Ending	Subject	Ending
yo	-ra	nosotros/nosotras	(accented vowel) + - ramos
tú	-ras	vosotros/vosotras	-rais
él	-ra	ellos	-ran
ella	-ra	ellas	-ran
usted	-ra	ustedes	-ran

Notice that the vowel in front of the nosotros/nosotras ending must have an accent mark. As you can see in the tener example in Table 2 , that is é for some verbs. And as you can see in Table 3 , á may be the accented vowel in front of some nosotros/nosotras endings.

TABLE 2

Past Subjunctive of the Verb Tener

Subject	Verb	Subject	Verb
yo	tuviera	nosotros/nosotras	tuviéramos
tú	tuvieras	vosotros/vosotras	tuvierais
él	tuviera	ellos	tuvieran
ella	tuviera	ellas	tuvieran
usted	tuviera	ustedes	tuvieran

TABLE 3

Past Subjunctive of the Verb Hablar

Subject	Verb	Subject	Verb
yo	hablara	nosotros/nosotras	habláramos
tú	hablaras	vosotros/vosotras	hablarais
él	hablara	ellos	hablaran
ella	hablara	ellas	hablaran
usted	hablara	ustedes	hablaran

The verb tener in Table 2 serves as a good example because it shows how different a verb can look in the past subjunctive due to the fact that the ellos preterit form often has little in common with the infinitive form.

Remember the following rule:

Preterit ellos form: tuvieron minus the -ron = tuvie-

Remember the following rule:

Preterit ellos form: hablaron minus the -ron = habla-

There is another set of endings, which is less frequently used, that can be used instead of the -ra/-ras/-ramos/-rais/-ran endings to create the past subjunctive. In Table 4 , notice that the letters -se replace -ra in every form. To use these endings, you must also use the ellos form of the preterit minus the -ron ending. There is no special reason why you would have to use the - se endings because they are exactly the same as the - ra endings; just be prepared to understand what they mean when you hear or see them.

TABLE 4

The Other Past Subjunctive Endings

Subject	Ending	Subject	Ending
yo	-se	nosotros/nosotras	(accented vowel) + -semos
tú	-ses	vosotros/vosotras	-seis
él	-se	ellos	-sen
ella	-se	ellas	-sen
usted	-se	ustedes	-sen

TABLE 5

The Verb Tener Using the Other Past Subjunctive Endings

Subject	Verb	Subject	Verb
yo	tuviese	nosotros/nosotras	tuviésemos
tú	tuvieses	vosotros/vosotras	tuvieseis
él	tuviese	ellos	tuviesen
ella	tuviese	ellas	tuviesen
usted	tuviese	ustedes	tuviesen

Remember the following rule:

Preterit ellos form: tuvieron minus the -ron = tuvie-

TABLE 6

The Verb Hablar Using the Other Past Subjunctive Endings

Subject	Verb	Subject	Verb
yo	hablase	nosotros/nosotras	hablásemos
tú	hablases	vosotros/vosotras	hablaseis
él	hablase	ellos	hablasen
ella	hablase	ellas	hablasen
usted	hablase	ustedes	hablasen

There are so many irregularities in the preterit tense that it is necessary to review the preterit tense with a special focus on the third person plural ( ellos) form.

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