Present Subjunctive

The subjunctive expresses wishes, wants, and can. The subjunctive marker is să.

Nu vrei să mergi la Bucureşti? - Don't you want to go to Bucharest?
Da, Vreau să merg la Bucureşti - Yes, I want to go to Bucharest.

Pot să scriu foarte bine - I can write very well.
Poţi să vorbeşti româneşte? - Can you speak Romanian?

If you haven't seen yet. The action verb person matches the subjunctive verb. That's how it is in this case. Next is a list of the verbs you can use in the subjunctive.

A trebui is the verb that expresses you must, you need, or you have to do something.

If you want to say "I want you to.." you say it like this:
Vreau să vezi ăsta! - I want you to see this!

As you probably notice, a vrea is in the 1st person singular (vreau), while a vedea is in the 2nd person singular (vezi). This is how it works if you want to say "I want you to..."

In Romanian you can't say "I need you to see this" or "you need them to see this", instead it's just "you need to see this" or "they need to see this". You should get it. ;)
Trebuie să vezi ăsta! - You need to see this!

a trebui in the present tense in all persons is always "trebuie". Pretty easy ;).

There is another expression for need. "a avea nevoie de". That's only used if you need something, not need to do something. You can say Am nevoie de odihnă - I need to rest. You can say am, ai, etc.. nevoie de to do something only if the something is in the subject sense, not verb. Basically "am nevoie de" translates to "i have a need of". I hope I didn't confuse you. ;) On to the subjunctive.

The subjunctive is also used with ca. ca să. Ca expresses "as" in English. Ca să basically is close to "in order to" or "so that" in English. And ca să nu is close to "lest" in English.

Merg la şcoală ca să învăţ - I'm going to school in order to learn.
El Trebuie să vorbească cu noi ca să înţelegem - He needs to speak with us so that we understand.

*1 Nu-i is the contraction for "nu este / e". This can also apply to a word that ends in vowel with este as the next word.

The subjunctive used after a preposition is used when you want to use a verb after a preposition.

Ea mereu vorbeşte fără se gândească - she always speaks without thinking.

Also used for a condition, expressed with "cu condiţia că". Translated to English, it's close to "only if" and literally it means "with the condition to"

Vin la tine cu condiţia să bem o bere. - I'm coming to your place only if we can drink a beer.

The expression "la tine" means at/to your place. It's used like other accusative pronouns. la mine - at/to my place, la el - at/to his place, etc.

When you want to say "let's go" or something similar to "let's" in an imperative form, you use să and the 1st person plural verb. You can use "Hai să" to make sort of a stronger command.

Să mergem! - Let's go!

Also when used in a question form, it's similar to should.

Să plecăm? - Should we leave?
Unde să merg - Where should I go?
Ce să fac - what should I do?

You can say "numai să", and that closely expresses "it's just that (subject) want" in English. Numai means "only".

Numai să vorbesc cu ea! - It's just that I want to speak to her.
Numai să vină şi ei - It's just that we want them to come too.

This is the hard part of it all, but you'll get used to it. In the 3rd person singular and plural, there are some changes for the verb after the subjunctive.

The ă changes to e. Also ează changes to eze. An irregular is a întârzia (to be late). (Să întârzie).

e changes to ă. An irregular is a vedea (to see) (Să vadă).

erge changes to eargă. You'll see a lot of those changes with words that have e in their stressed syllable when you make a change. It'll change to ea with ă as the ending vowel.

e changes to ea with a as the ending vowel. Also ea changes to e with e as the ending vowel. An irregular is a contribui (to contribute) (Sa contribuie).

ăşte changes to ască. Coborî is an irregular -î verb. Its ending changes to e.

These kind of changes don't happen in just verbs, some subject words and adjectives for plural or gender changes that have the same structure like "ea", "e", etc. changes according to rules. It gets complicated, but we'll save more of that for later.

Here are some more verb conjugations you need to know for the subjunctive.

Here are some example sentences given.

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