Puede ser que el río esté contaminado

Puede ser que el río esté contaminado. It could be that the river is contaminated. Shouldn't this be esta with accent on a instead of este with accent on the second e

Hola Aurora, The statement is not concrete it is "could be" therefore the present subjunctive esté is used. Saludos, Ricardo

I was thinking how confusing this would have been for me 6 or 9 months ago. Now, even though I have not yet studied the subjunctive and don't yet know how to use it in my sentences, after reading Ricardo's succinct explanation and quickly looking at a conjugation table, it made perfect sense. It is an encouraging sign of progress.

Hola Dan, Your progress is quite evident and I think when you get to the subjunctive you'll probably grasp it quicker than I did. Hmm, I believe that was the subjunctive in English. Saludos, Ricardo

Thanks guys. Me suena bien.

Gracias, Ricardo. Yes, I believe it was the subjunctive in English. And to think, before I started RS I am not sure I knew there was a subjunctive in English. If I once knew it was way too many years ago.

I think the subjunctive is triggered a lot more frequently in Spanish than in English. We English speakers do not have the same sense for it that Spanish speakers have.

Robert, a few weeks ago someone here posted a link to a You Tube video by a young Vietnamese man who grew up in the US. The point of his video...which may have been a Ted Talk..was that there is no subjunctive in Vietnamese and his father did not know how to talk about "could haves." I am assuming from your badge that you have studied Chinese. Do those languages have the subjunctive?

Hola a todos, I should have phrased my reply as, now that was an example of the subjunctive in English, which it was. My use of" believe" was just a figure of speech. I agree that the subjunctive is triggered more often in Spanish but on the other hand we often don't change the verb in English when using the subjunctive so it's not as easily recognized. For example: In the preterite, Yesterday, I had a hammer. In the subjunctive, If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. Saludos, Ricardo

In Chinese, there are no verb conjugations at all. There are helper words to indicate tense. So, at first blush one would have to say that there is no subjunctive tense in Chinese because there are no verb conjugations. However, it is probably not true to say there is no subjunctive mood in Chinese. You can express concepts like hoping or express conterfactual statements. For more information, follow this link. http://shawnpowrie.com/chinese/counterfactual/