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Demystifying the Spanish Subjunctive: Feel the Fear and 'Subjunctive' Anyway
We, Gordon and Cynthia of LightSpeed Spanish, are totally excited to bring you the book that really does demystify the Present and Past Spanish Subjunctive. Most students of the Spanish language shy away from this subject and it's no wonder! So many books on the market make it look complex and difficult to understand. Yet here at LightSpeed Spanish we have developed the perfect system to walk you through the entire range of the Spanish Subjunctive, step by step. This comprehensive book uses simple, easy to understand explanations that won't leave you mind boggled, while it guides you through the creation of over 600 Subjunctive sentences. By the time you've finished this learning journey we anticipate that you will be more confident, more at ease and far more able to use the Spanish Subjunctive in every facet of your communication. It really is a must buy for any serious student of the Spanish language!
358 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 2015
83 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 10, 2016
In the journey of learning Spanish every student, sooner or later, will come across with infamous subjunctive mood of Spanish language. This typically happens be around upper intermediate levels. In order to sound natural and get to the next level, it is necessary to master subjunctive.
Learning to conjugate verbs in subjunctive turns out to be the easy part of the puzzle. What is more important is recognizing when to use indicative mood and when to use subjunctive mood. Grammar books intended for intermediate to advanced students typically allocate a few pages or perhaps a chapter (typically towards the very end of the book) but that barely scratches the surface. That is simply not enough. They are awfully confusing and incomplete and even so, lacking sufficient practical exercises to make use of subjunctive automatic.
When I recognized that I needed more help, I went on searching available books dedicated to subjunctive. Unfortunately, there were not so many. This is actually my second book. Before this I had finished Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close.
This is a self published book by a British-Spanish couple Gordon and Cynthia. I got to know them when I discovered their podcasts on iTunes (Lightspeed Spanish) a few years back and I have listened to all of them; all the way from beginners to advanced. I also subscribed to their Facebook page and when they announced that they had this book coming out I was trilled. I bought the book practically as soon as it was available at Amazon and started studying it soon after. In the middle I gave breaks but came back and today I have finally finished it all (after almost 14 months)
This book is organized as short demonstrative sections where patterns of subjunctive usage are introduced followed by exercises where you translate sentences in English (source language) to Spanish (target language) and be assured there are plenty of it! At various points in book, previous exercises are repeated in mixed order so when you are finished, and if have done all exercises, you have will have translated the same sentence 3 times (Gordon's rule of 3).
So, what is the verdict? How much have I progressed? I think my subjunctive have greatly improved after finishing this book and I believe it will help others as well. Is this book perfect? Unfortunately the answer is no but the authors have done a pretty good job. Gordon even responded to a few questions I submitted via the email address in the book.
There are a few things that I did not like about this book:
1) There is no table of contents or index. So, when you want to go back to a section after some time, it sometimes requires rather time consuming browsing.
2) It looks like some of the exercises were revised (changed) after their copies in revision sections later in the book were inserted. As a result, correct answers to exercises in revision sections sometimes do not correspond to the answer key at the end of the book.
I think now there may be a 2nd edition of the book. Perhaps, they have fixed some of the little issues. Still, as it is, it is a very valuable resource.
Learning to conjugate verbs in subjunctive turns out to be the easy part of the puzzle. What is more important is recognizing when to use indicative mood and when to use subjunctive mood. Grammar books intended for intermediate to advanced students typically allocate a few pages or perhaps a chapter (typically towards the very end of the book) but that barely scratches the surface. That is simply not enough. They are awfully confusing and incomplete and even so, lacking sufficient practical exercises to make use of subjunctive automatic.
When I recognized that I needed more help, I went on searching available books dedicated to subjunctive. Unfortunately, there were not so many. This is actually my second book. Before this I had finished Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close.
This is a self published book by a British-Spanish couple Gordon and Cynthia. I got to know them when I discovered their podcasts on iTunes (Lightspeed Spanish) a few years back and I have listened to all of them; all the way from beginners to advanced. I also subscribed to their Facebook page and when they announced that they had this book coming out I was trilled. I bought the book practically as soon as it was available at Amazon and started studying it soon after. In the middle I gave breaks but came back and today I have finally finished it all (after almost 14 months)
This book is organized as short demonstrative sections where patterns of subjunctive usage are introduced followed by exercises where you translate sentences in English (source language) to Spanish (target language) and be assured there are plenty of it! At various points in book, previous exercises are repeated in mixed order so when you are finished, and if have done all exercises, you have will have translated the same sentence 3 times (Gordon's rule of 3).
So, what is the verdict? How much have I progressed? I think my subjunctive have greatly improved after finishing this book and I believe it will help others as well. Is this book perfect? Unfortunately the answer is no but the authors have done a pretty good job. Gordon even responded to a few questions I submitted via the email address in the book.
There are a few things that I did not like about this book:
1) There is no table of contents or index. So, when you want to go back to a section after some time, it sometimes requires rather time consuming browsing.
2) It looks like some of the exercises were revised (changed) after their copies in revision sections later in the book were inserted. As a result, correct answers to exercises in revision sections sometimes do not correspond to the answer key at the end of the book.
I think now there may be a 2nd edition of the book. Perhaps, they have fixed some of the little issues. Still, as it is, it is a very valuable resource.
July 26, 2022
I started reading this book because I was hoping to solidify my understanding of the subjunctive. Although I did pick up a few useful tidbits from this book, I was really disappointed with most of it. There were examples given that didn’t match the rules/patterns/exceptions explained in the book. For example, it gave the example “todo depende de cómo lo veamos,” but it never explained if or when “cómo” could be used instead of “que” to “trigger” the subjunctive, so I didn’t know if this could be done anytime or only in certain situations or what.
Also, it talked about the subjunctive being used only when there are different subjects, but I wasn’t clear on whether that only applied to situations where particular verbs are used before “que.” Also, the examples they gave for when the subject is the same didn’t have “que” in them, so I wasn’t sure if that meant that if you did include “que” then you would still use the subjunctive, or if you would just never use “que” in that situation and that’s why you wouldn’t use the subjunctive in that situation (it never explained this). For example, they gave an example like “Ver ella me hace pensar en mi hermano.” So if it used “que,” would it be “Ver ella me hace que piensa en mi hermano” or would it be “Ver ella me hace que pienso en mi hermano”? Or would you never use "que" in that situation (in which case they should explain that because it would make it a lot easier to understand why subjunctive isn’t used in that situation)?
The book advises not to bother remembering all the specific “trigger” words, which may be ok if you are just starting to learn Spanish, but it feels very impractical for the long term. We need to know these if we are going to communicate with any regularity with native speakers. I wish the book had included an index in the back with a list of all the “trigger” words and structures given throughout the book. It would be handy to keep a list at your desk to refer to and help solidify these in your head.
Some of the explanations feel very roundabout or backwards. For example, at one point there is a list of words that is labeled as “non-triggers.” However, they are actually words that use the subjunctive only if used with no/negation. I wish that is how they would be labeled in the book—otherwise, it appears as if these words never “trigger” the subjunctive.
There is a lot of advice in the book along the lines of “Don’t try to understand this, because you won’t. You’ll just have to get used to it.” This type of advice is frustrating to read, and I wish the author would focus more time on writing clearer explanations and covering all the information. At one point, they said this book doesn’t explain everything about the subjunctive, because it would be impossible to explain everything about the subjunctive in one book. This is about halfway through the book, and was very frustrating to read, because obviously if you are looking for a book about the subjunctive, you are hoping to learn everything about it so you can use it properly and understand it properly. I would have chosen a different book if I had known how limited this book would be.
Also, there are some casual statements throughout the book as though the author is trying to carry on a conversation with the reader and encourage them, but it can get a bit frustrating and condescending at times. For example, it will say “Do you get it?” And if your answer is “no,” there’s no help and you just get more frustrated by having someone remind you that you don’t get it. There are also occasional statements like “…you’ll find yourself making subjunctive sentences unconsciously and with ease,” which felt quite unhelpful for a book aimed at people who are obviously having difficulty understanding the subjunctive. I don’t think it’s reasonable (especially with the confusing explanations and examples, and the author’s own admission that this book doesn’t have all the information about the subjunctive) to suggest that you will fully understand the subjunctive by the end of the book, much less use it “unconsciously” and “with ease.” That just feels like the author is setting unreasonably high expectations for the reader, which gets to be frustrating after a while. I was sitting there struggling with basic questions about which words require the subjunctive and which ones don’t, and reading that just felt like the expectation was that I should soon be using the subjunctive so well that I’d be using it “unconsciously,” which I knew was impossible, so it just made me feel like giving up.
I had to take multiple-day breaks in between reading short sections of this book, because I found it so frustrating and unhelpful. I kept at it because I kept telling myself that it must be helpful, because I had seen other people rate it highly, so I figured maybe most of the helpful information was near the end, or that something would “click” towards the end and that the information in the first part of the book would finally make sense (it didn't).
I’m glad others found this book helpful, but I’m not clear on how they managed to learn all they needed to learn about the subjunctive from this book. I ended up reading a second book on the subjunctive later (Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close, Second Edition), and that one was much more precise and detailed, and helped me a lot more.
Also, it talked about the subjunctive being used only when there are different subjects, but I wasn’t clear on whether that only applied to situations where particular verbs are used before “que.” Also, the examples they gave for when the subject is the same didn’t have “que” in them, so I wasn’t sure if that meant that if you did include “que” then you would still use the subjunctive, or if you would just never use “que” in that situation and that’s why you wouldn’t use the subjunctive in that situation (it never explained this). For example, they gave an example like “Ver ella me hace pensar en mi hermano.” So if it used “que,” would it be “Ver ella me hace que piensa en mi hermano” or would it be “Ver ella me hace que pienso en mi hermano”? Or would you never use "que" in that situation (in which case they should explain that because it would make it a lot easier to understand why subjunctive isn’t used in that situation)?
The book advises not to bother remembering all the specific “trigger” words, which may be ok if you are just starting to learn Spanish, but it feels very impractical for the long term. We need to know these if we are going to communicate with any regularity with native speakers. I wish the book had included an index in the back with a list of all the “trigger” words and structures given throughout the book. It would be handy to keep a list at your desk to refer to and help solidify these in your head.
Some of the explanations feel very roundabout or backwards. For example, at one point there is a list of words that is labeled as “non-triggers.” However, they are actually words that use the subjunctive only if used with no/negation. I wish that is how they would be labeled in the book—otherwise, it appears as if these words never “trigger” the subjunctive.
There is a lot of advice in the book along the lines of “Don’t try to understand this, because you won’t. You’ll just have to get used to it.” This type of advice is frustrating to read, and I wish the author would focus more time on writing clearer explanations and covering all the information. At one point, they said this book doesn’t explain everything about the subjunctive, because it would be impossible to explain everything about the subjunctive in one book. This is about halfway through the book, and was very frustrating to read, because obviously if you are looking for a book about the subjunctive, you are hoping to learn everything about it so you can use it properly and understand it properly. I would have chosen a different book if I had known how limited this book would be.
Also, there are some casual statements throughout the book as though the author is trying to carry on a conversation with the reader and encourage them, but it can get a bit frustrating and condescending at times. For example, it will say “Do you get it?” And if your answer is “no,” there’s no help and you just get more frustrated by having someone remind you that you don’t get it. There are also occasional statements like “…you’ll find yourself making subjunctive sentences unconsciously and with ease,” which felt quite unhelpful for a book aimed at people who are obviously having difficulty understanding the subjunctive. I don’t think it’s reasonable (especially with the confusing explanations and examples, and the author’s own admission that this book doesn’t have all the information about the subjunctive) to suggest that you will fully understand the subjunctive by the end of the book, much less use it “unconsciously” and “with ease.” That just feels like the author is setting unreasonably high expectations for the reader, which gets to be frustrating after a while. I was sitting there struggling with basic questions about which words require the subjunctive and which ones don’t, and reading that just felt like the expectation was that I should soon be using the subjunctive so well that I’d be using it “unconsciously,” which I knew was impossible, so it just made me feel like giving up.
I had to take multiple-day breaks in between reading short sections of this book, because I found it so frustrating and unhelpful. I kept at it because I kept telling myself that it must be helpful, because I had seen other people rate it highly, so I figured maybe most of the helpful information was near the end, or that something would “click” towards the end and that the information in the first part of the book would finally make sense (it didn't).
I’m glad others found this book helpful, but I’m not clear on how they managed to learn all they needed to learn about the subjunctive from this book. I ended up reading a second book on the subjunctive later (Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close, Second Edition), and that one was much more precise and detailed, and helped me a lot more.
January 2, 2021
I am halfway through the book and I have to say that by this is the most in depth explanation of the subjunctive I've seen. It has been a great help already and I am yet to finish the book. It provides clear indications of the structures that trigger the subjunctive, versus the commonly flouted yet incorrect 'explanation' that the subjunctive expresses uncertainty. The book clearly expresses this is not the case and instead gives clear and practical guidance to when it is needed. I would highly recommend this to intermediate learners.
October 5, 2017
If you are looking to understand the subjunctive, look no further. Loved the explanations and exercises!
July 1, 2024
le daría cinco si no hubiera tenido tantos errores
August 1, 2024
Useful
October 22, 2016
Excellent book on the subjunctive, but not for beginners. Having said that, I'd recommend reading it once you are familiar with the normal tenses, so you will understand how it fits into everything. The subjunctive is very clearly explained with lots of examples and practice. I'm sure I'll come back to this one again and again.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews