Can someone explain why the subjunctive was used?
I ran across a sentence that used the subjunctive but I can't figure out why. Here is the sentence I read:
L'ONU a fait état de la mort non confirmée de 44 personnes pour l'instant. Les autorités s'attendent à ce que ce chiffre s'alourdisse.
Can someone explain to me why the subjunctive is used in the last sentence? Maybe I'm getting tripped up by the 'à ce que ce' part of the sentence. Why couldn't the sentence be written as:
Les autorités s'attendent à ce chiffre va s'alourdir.
or perhaps
Les autorités s'attendent à ce chiffre s'alourdit.
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 2
2
"que" is the key word. When you state "someone's feeling on the action of someone else' action" (I use each word very loosely here), we use the subjonctive. There are typical structure, like:
I would like you to.. (J'aimerais que tu)
I'm glad you did... (Je suis heureux que tu...)
So here it's the same. The authorities "have the feeling" that the number will increase.
There is a text written on subjunctive by another teacher. Have a look http://www.italki.com/article/379/why-you-need-to-use-the-subjunctive-in-french#.VQaKkY6sX3o
2
Bonjour,
Apres 's'attendre a ce que', il faut le subjonctif. Je m'attends a ce qu'il soit en retard.
Mais tu peux utiliser aussi S'attendre a + nom ou verbe a l'infinitif....Ils s'attendent a l'alourdissement de ce bilan.
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