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Inlinguistics,irrealis moods (abbreviatedIRR) are the main set ofgrammatical 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 therealis moods. They are used in statements withouttruth value (imperative, interrogative, subordinate, etc).

Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particularmorphological markers orclause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so amongAlgonquian languages such asBlackfoot.^[1]

Thesubjunctive mood, sometimes calledconjunctive mood, has several uses independent 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 Pauleat an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Pauleats an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense,indicative mood. Another way, especially inBritish English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paulshould eat an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple."

Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "Andif he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass..." (KJVLeviticus 5:7), have become archaic or formal.^[13] Statements such as "I shall ensure thathe 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 thegrammar of theRomance 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).

Theconditional mood (abbreviatedCOND) is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, inconditional sentences. In Modern English, it is aperiphrastic construction, with the formwould + infinitive, e.g.,I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditionalinflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally calledKonjunktiv II, differing fromKonjunktiv I. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:

English:Johnwould eat if he were hungry

German:Johannesäße, wenn/falls er Hunger hätte

or:Johanneswürde essen, wenn er Hunger hätte

French:Jeanmangerait s'il avait faim

Spanish:Juancomería si tuviera hambre

Portuguese:Joãocomeria se tivesse fome

Italian:Giovannimangerebbe se avesse fame

Swedish:Johanskulle äta, om han var hungrig

Danish:Johanville spise, hvis han var sulten

NorwegianBokmål:Johanville spise, hvis han var sulten

NorwegianNynorsk:Johanville eta om han var svolten

Icelandic:Jóhannmyndi borða ef hann væri svangur

Dutch:Johanneszou eten als hij honger had

Irish:D'íosfadh Seán rud dá mbeadh ocras air

Hindi:जॉनखाता अगर भूख होती उसे,romanized: jônkhātā agar bhūkh hotī use

In theRomance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in theapodosis (main clause) of conditional clauses, and in a fewset phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in theprotasis (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 inFinnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis.

A further example of Finnish conditional^[14] 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 inHungarian, which uses the marker-na/-ne/-ná/-né:Vennék egy házat, ha sokat keresnék. InPolish, 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 frequently used by some speakers:Si j'aurais su, je ne serais pas venu ("If would have known, I wouldn't have come") instead ofSi j'avais su, je ne serais pas venu ("If I had known, I wouldn't have come"). This usage is heavily stigmatized ("les Si n'aiment pas les Ré !"). However,J'aurais su, je (ne) serais pas venu is more accepted, as a colloquial form.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 neserais pas venu;Si j'avais su, je nefusse pas venu;Si j'eusse su, je nefusse pas venu.

Theoptative 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 areAlbanian,Ancient Greek,Sanskrit,Finnish,Avestan (it was also present inProto-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 theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights begins with:

whereälköön pidätettäkö "shall not be arrested" is the imperative ofei pidätetä "is not arrested". Also, using the conditional mood-isi- in conjunction with the clitic-pa yields an optative meaning:olisinpa "if only I were". Here, it is evident that the wish has not been fulfilled and probably will not be.

In Sanskrit, the optative is formed by adding the secondary endings to the verb stem. The optative, as other moods, is found in active voice and middle voice. Examples:bhares "may you bear" (active) andbharethaas "may you bear [for yourself]" (middle). The optative may not only express wishes, requests and commands, but also possibilities, e.g.,kadaacid goshabdena budhyeta "he might perhaps wake up due to the bellowing of cows",[15] doubt and uncertainty, e.g.,katham vidyaam Nalam "how would I be able to recognize Nala?" The optative may further be used instead of aconditional mood.

Thejussive mood (abbreviatedJUS) expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, this is distinguished from the cohortative mood in that the cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found inArabic, where it is called theمجزوم (majzūm), and also inHebrew and in the constructed languageEsperanto. Therules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.

Thepotential mood (abbreviatedPOT) is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in many languages, including inFinnish,^[16]Japanese,^[17] andSanskrit (as well as its ancestorProto-Indo-European),^[18] and in theSami languages. (In Japanese it is often called something liketentative, sincepotential is used to refer to avoice indicating capability to perform the action.^{[citation needed]})

In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is-ne-, as in *men +ne +e →mennee "(s/he/it) will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify togeminates. In spoken language, the wordkai "probably" is used instead, e.g.,se kai tulee "he probably comes", instead ofhän tullee.

Theimperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In many circumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it is often used with care. Example: "Paul, do your homework now". An imperative is used to tell someone to do something without argument.

Many languages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative (such as "go", "run", "do"). Other languages, such asSeri andLatin, however, use special imperative forms.

In English, second person is implied by the imperative except when first-person plural is specified, as in "Let's go" ("Let us go").

The prohibitive mood, the negative imperative may be grammatically or morphologically different from the imperative mood in some languages. It indicates that the action of the verb is not permitted, e.g., "Do not go!" (archaically, "Go not!"). In Portuguese and Spanish, for example, the forms of the imperative are only used for the imperative itself, e.g., "vai embora!" "¡vete!" ("leave!"), whereas the subjunctive is used to form negative commands, e.g., "não vás embora!" "¡no tevayas!" ("don't leave!").

In English, the imperative is sometimes used to form aconditional sentence: e.g., "Go eastward a mile, and you will see it" means "If you go eastward a mile, you will see it".

Whereas the optative expresses hopes, thedesiderative mood expresses wishes and desires. Desires are what we want to be the case; hope generally implies optimism toward the chances of a desire's fulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chances of occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it. Few languages have a distinct desiderative mood; three that do areSanskrit,Japanese, andProto-Indo-European.

In Japanese the verb inflection-tai expresses the speaker's desire, e.g.,watashi wa asoko ni ikitai "I want to go there". This form is treated as a pseudo-adjective: the auxiliary verbgaru is used by dropping the end-i of an adjective to indicate the outward appearance of another's mental state, in this case the desire of a person other than the speaker (e.g.Jon wa tabetagatte imasu "John appears to want to eat").

In Sanskrit, the infix-sa-, sometimes-isa-, is added to the reduplicated root, e.g.jíjīviṣati "he wants to live" instead ofjī́vati "he lives".^[19] The desiderative in Sanskrit may also be used as imminent:mumūrṣati "he is about to die". The Sanskrit desiderative continues Proto-Indo-European*-(h₁)se-.

Thedubitative mood is used inOjibwe,Turkish, Bulgarian and other languages. It expresses the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about the event denoted by the verb. For example, in Ojibwe,Baawitigong igo ayaa noongom translates as "he is inBaawitigong today." When the dubitative suffix-dog is added, this becomesBaawitigong igo ayaadog noongom, "I guess he must be in Baawitigong."^[20]

Thepresumptive mood is used inRomanian andHindi to express presupposition or hypothesis, regardless of the fact denoted by the verb, as well as other more or less similar attitudes: doubt, curiosity, concern, condition, indifference, inevitability. Often, for a sentence in presumptive mood, no exact translation can be constructed in English which conveys the same nuance.

TheRomanian sentence,acolo s-o fi dus "he must have gone there" shows the basic presupposition use, while the following excerpt from a poem byEminescu shows the use both in a conditional clausede-o fi "suppose it is" and in a main clause showing an attitude of submission to fatele-om duce "we would bear".

De-o fi una, de-o fi alta... Ce e scris și pentru noi,

Bucuroși le-om duce toate, de e pace, de-i război.

Be it one, be it the other... Whatever fate we have,

We will gladly go through all, be it peace or be it war

InHindi, the presumptive mood can be used in all the three tenses. The same structure for a particulargrammatical aspect can be used to refer to the present, past and future times depending on the context.^[21][22] The table below shows the conjugations for the presumptive mood copula in Hindi and Romanian with some exemplar usage on the right:

Note:

1. The translations are just the closest possible English approximations and not exact.
2. Only masculine conjugations are shown for Hindi.

Thehortative orhortatory mood is used to express plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. It does not exist in English, but phrases such as "let us" are often used to denote it. In Latin, it is interchangeable with the jussive.

Theinferential mood (abbreviatedINFER orINFR) is used to report a nonwitnessed event without confirming it, but the same forms also function as admiratives in theBalkan languages in which they occur. Theinferential mood is used in some languages such asTurkish to convey information about events that were not directly observed or were inferred by the speaker. When referring toBulgarian and other Balkan languages, it is often calledrenarrative mood; when referring toEstonian, it is calledoblique mood. The inferential is usually impossible to distinguish when translated into English. For instance, indicative Bulgarianтой отиде (toy otide) and Turkisho gitti translates the same as inferentialтой отишъл (toy otishal) ando gitmiş — with the English indicativehe went.^[23] Using the first pair, however, implies very strongly that the speaker either witnessed the event or is very sure that it took place. The second pair implies either that the speaker did not in fact witness it taking place, that it occurred in the remote past, or that there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually happened. If it were necessary to make the distinction, then the English constructions "he must have gone" or "he is said to have gone" would partly translate the inferential.

• Huddleston, Rodney D.;Pullum, Geoffrey K., eds. (2002).The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-43146-8.

Look upirrealis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Greek moods
• Mood and modality: Out of theory and into the fray

• Grammatical moods

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