In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated irr) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. They are used in statements without truth value (imperative, interrogative, subordinate, etc). Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particular morphological markers or clause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so among Algonquian languages such as Blackfoot.
List of irrealis moods
Moods
Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope is language-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory. Example: "I suggested that Paul eat an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul eats an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul should eat an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple." Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (KJV Leviticus 5:7), have become archaic or formal. Statements such as "I shall ensure that he leave immediately" often are formal, and often have been supplanted by constructions with the indicative, such as "I'll make sure [that] he leaves immediately". (In other situations, the verb form for subjunctive and indicative may be identical: "I'll make sure [that] you leave immediately.) The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages. In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events (see the main article).
Conditional
The conditional mood (abbreviated cond) is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally called Konjunktiv II, differing from Konjunktiv I. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g., I would buy. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:
English: John would eat if he were hungry German: Johannes äße, wenn/falls er Hunger hätte or: Johannes würde essen, wenn er Hunger hätte French: Jean mangerait s'il avait faim Spanish: Juan comería si tuviera hambre Portuguese: João comeria se tivesse fome Italian: Giovanni mangerebbe se avesse fame Swedish: Johan skulle äta, om han var hungrig Danish: Johan ville spise, hvis han var sulten Norwegian Bokmål: Johan ville spise, hvis han var sulten Norwegian Nynorsk: Johan ville eta om han var svolten Icelandic: Jóhann myndi borða ef hann væri svangur Dutch: Johannes zou eten als hij honger had Irish: D'íosfadh Seán rud dá mbeadh ocras air Hindi: जॉन खाता अगर भूख होती उसे, romanized: jôn khātā agar bhūkh hotī use In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause) is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others, in German (as above) and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis. A further example of Finnish conditional is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker -isi-: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa, just like in Hungarian, which uses the marker -na/-ne/-ná/-né: Vennék egy házat, ha sokat keresnék. In Polish, the conditional marker -by also appears twice: Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy. Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word 'would' is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction. In French, while the standard language requires the indicative in the dependent clause, using the conditional mood in both clauses is used by some speakers: Si j'aurais su, je ne serais pas venu ("If I would have known, I wouldn't have come") instead of Si j'avais su, je ne serais pas venu ("If I had known, I wouldn't have come"). However, this usage is considered incorrect and heavily stigmatized. By contrast, J'aurais su, je ne serais pas venu is considered correct. In the literary language, past unreal conditional sentences as above may take the pluperfect subjunctive in one clause or both, so that the following sentences are all valid and have the same meaning as the preceding example: Si j'eusse su, je ne serais pas venu; Si j'avais su, je ne fusse pas venu; Si j'eusse su, je ne fusse pas venu.
Optative
The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands. Other uses may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Avestan (it was also present in Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of the aforementioned languages except for Finnish). In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it at least expresses formality. For example, the ninth Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
