In this lesson, we’re going to show how to conjugate the French subjunctive mood. The subjunctive helps express subjective ideas, possibilities, emotions, wants, and needs.

While successfully using the subjunctive mood in a sentence can be somewhat complicated, conjugating the subjunctive of a regular verb is quite simple. Just remove –ent from the end of the ils (third person plural) present tense form of a verb and add the appropriate pronoun ending in its place. The endings are the same for all regular –ER, –IR, and –RE verbs.

Some irregular verbs also conjugated in this manner. Irregular –IR verbs that follow the “alternate” set of conjugation rules (dormir, mentir, partir, sentir, servir, and sortir) and irregular –RE verbs that drop the final –t in singular forms (battre and mettre) are treated as if they are regular in the subjunctive.

* The simple present and subjunctive of regular verbs share the same ending.