The Spanish Subjunctive can sometimes be a little difficult to understand for English speakers.
We hope that we can help with one of the uses of the Spanish subjunctive by using this following real life and hopefully amusing example.
A teacher in a British secondary school is organising the Spanish trip for his year nine students.
All the year nine students are assembled in the main hall and before Mr.
Windsor goes in to see them he goes to the school office to pick up all the relevant documents.
These documents inform him that about half of the students have already brought their passports and medical documents in to be checked but half have not.
This is something that he now knows and it is going to affect what he says to the students in the hall.
He goes into the hall, gets all the year nines listening and says: " OK people, those of you who have already shown your passports and medical documents have no need to stay here for this first part of the information meeting, instead you can now go to room H7 where Miss Heart will talk to you about hotel arrangements.
" "All the others who have not shown their passports and medical documents need to stay in the hall".
Mr.
Windsor can say this because although he does not know exactly which students have shown their documents he knows some have.
The situation in a Spanish school is going to be very, very different.
Mr.
Pulido is organising his English trip for the year nine students.
Oh yes, all the year nines are assembled in the school hall but when Mr.
Pulido goes to the school office he is met with a rather different situation to that which Mr.
Windsor encountered in Britain.
The school office has no documents, has no information, has no idea if any of the students have already brought in their passports and medical documents for checking.
The office staff guess that some of the students may have brought in documents but, actually, they in fact don't know.
What is the poor school teacher to do? Well, he goes into the main hall and gets the year nines attention and says: "OK people, if any of you have by any chance already brought in your passports and medical documents, and I am not saying that any of you have, but just in case, well if that is the case then those of you who have done so, as I say if you have done so can now go to room H7 where Miss Pallarés will talk to you about hotel arrangements.
" OK, so what are we talking about here? We are talking about degrees of certainty.
Some people are quite sure that something must be the case while other people are not sure at all.
In the English language when you express degrees of certainty, or you could also call it degrees of doubt, the way in which you speak is different to in the Spanish language.
In the Spanish language the expression of ideas of degrees of certainty is said to use the grammatical term the subjunctive or, as we say in Spanish, el subjuntivo.
The English language has no subjunctive as such.
In English there are comparable ways of speaking or grammatical structures which are used to express the same or, well, more or less, the same kind of idea as in Spanish.
Let's look at two statements, one in English and one in Spanish: English: " OK people, those of you who have already shown your passports and medical documents have no need to stay here for this first part of the information meeting, instead you can now go to room H7 where Miss Heart will talk to you about hotel arrangements.
" Now for the Spanish version of this English statement above: "Bueno, a ver, aquellos que ya hayan entregado los pasaportes y documentación médica ya pueden pasar al aula H7 y la Señorita Pallarés les explicará la situación con respecto al alojamiento.
" What is the difference? The difference is that the English school teacher is saying that he knows that some of the students already have brought their documents in whilst the Spanish school teacher is saying that he does not know that for sure.
The clue is in looking at the Spanish word "hayan" as it appears above.
What is this "hayan" word? Well, it is a way of using the word "haber".
"Haber" is the Spanish word you use when you want to say "have", but not, please note, when you want to say for example: "I have two MP players".
Nothing at all to do with having anything.
No, in this case we are talking about when you use the word "have" to explain what you have done.
For example: "I have taken in my passport".
In English you use have together with another word to give information about some action that you have done.
For example: "I have" followed by, well, followed by just about anything that you have done, erm, like won the London marathon, climbed a mountain, bought a pair of skinny jeans! This "haber" word is known by people who are interested in grammar as a verb and verbs can change in Spanish quite a lot depending on who is saying what to whom.
Have a look at these examples: I have= Yo he You have= Tú has (when speaking to one of your friends) You have= Usted ha (when speaking to one of your teachers, keeping things polite and formal) He has= El ha She has= Ella ha And now it's going to get tricky or at least the "haber" word is going to start looking rather, erm, well not a lot like an "haber word".
We have= Nosotros hemos You (as in more than one person) have= Vosotros habéis (when speaking to more than one of your friends) You (as in more than one person) have = Ustedes han (when speaking to more than one of your teachers, keeping things polite and formal) They (boys) have= Ellos han They (girls) have= Ellas han But as we said right from the beginning sometimes you just do not know what someone has or has not done and that is when the Spanish subjunctive is so useful.
So the "haber" word becomes "hayan" when talking to more than one person and if you want to focus on just one person it becomes "haya".
The Golden rule is if you do not know for sure, use the subjunctive.
That way you allow for all eventualities and avoid inadvertently offending anyone.