Subjunctive after Verbs of Desire and Volition

When you want, prefer, wish, demand, or expect someone else to do something, French puts the verb of that someone else's action into the subjunctive. Je veux que tu viennes — "I want you to come." This is the second-most-frequent home of the productive French subjunctive after il faut que, and it is where English speakers most often slip into the indicative by reflex. Je veux que tu viens is a real and very common error — and it is wrong every single time.

But there is a second rule, just as universal as the first, that English speakers also get wrong: when the wanter and the doer are the same person, you do not use the subjunctive at all — you use a plain infinitive. Je veux venir — "I want to come." French simply does not allow je veux que je vienne with a coreferential subject; it sounds redundant and ungrammatical to native speakers. So this page covers two interlocking rules — when subjects differ (subjunctive) and when they match (infinitive) — and the cluster of common volition verbs that obey them.

The core logic: desire about someone else's action

The subjunctive shows up here because of what desire fundamentally is: a wish that something become true. The action you want has not yet happened — it lives in the realm of "what I want to be the case," not in the realm of established fact. The subjunctive marks exactly that mode: actions that are wished, hoped, demanded, or expected, rather than asserted as real. Once you have this idea, every verb of desire follows the same logic: there are two subjects in play (the one who wants, and the one who is supposed to do), and the gap between them is the subjunctive's home.

In each of these, the matrix subject (the wanter) and the embedded subject (the doer) are different people. The subjunctive in the que-clause is obligatory — there is no version of any of these sentences with the indicative.

The same-subject rule: drop the que-clause, use the infinitive

When the matrix subject and the desired action's subject are the same person, French does not use que + subjunctive. Instead, it strips the construction down to the matrix verb plus a plain infinitive.

This is one of the cleanest, most reliable rules in French syntax. There is no je veux que je vienne. Native speakers find that construction almost painful — it violates a deep economy principle of French. If the subjects match, you collapse to the infinitive; if they differ, you expand to que + subjunctive.

The volition verbs: a productive cluster

Many French verbs trigger this same pattern. Here are the everyday ones, grouped by intensity:

Pure desire / preference

• vouloir que — to want
• désirer que — to desire (slightly more formal)
• souhaiter que — to wish
• préférer que — to prefer
• aimer (mieux) que — to like / would prefer
• aimerais que (conditional of aimer) — would like

Demand / order

• exiger que — to demand / require
• ordonner que — to order
• commander que — to command (formal / military)
• interdire que — to forbid
• défendre que — to forbid (slightly literary)

Suggestion / advice / request

• demander que — to ask (that something be done)
• conseiller que — to advise (rare in this construction; usually with à
  • person + de
    • inf.)
• proposer que — to propose / suggest
• suggérer que — to suggest
• recommander que — to recommend

Expectation / waiting

• attendre que — to wait for / expect
• s'attendre à ce que — to expect (note the à ce que construction)
• tenir à ce que — to insist on (note the à ce que construction)

Tolerance / acceptance

• supporter que — to bear / put up with (often negated)
• admettre que — to admit / accept (often negated; mixed with indicative — see below)
• accepter que — to accept

Tense matching inside the que-clause

The matrix verb's tense (je veux, je voulais, je voudrais, je voudrai) does not change the subjunctive rule — the embedded verb stays in the subjunctive. But the choice between subjonctif présent and subjonctif passé depends on the relative ordering of the two actions, exactly as elsewhere in the subjunctive system.

For verbs of pure volition (vouloir, désirer, souhaiter, préférer), the desired action is almost always future relative to the wanting — so the subjonctif présent dominates. The subjonctif passé is more common with verbs that have a retrospective flavor (regretter, s'attendre à ce que, exiger) where the action can already be in the past.

Espérer que: the surprising exception

One verb that looks like it should belong in this cluster is espérer que — "to hope that." But espérer que takes the indicative in modern French, not the subjunctive. This catches every learner.

The historical reason: espérer in older French meant something closer to "to expect" or "to await," and it could take either mood. Modern French has settled on the indicative, treating the hoped-for outcome as something the speaker considers reasonably likely. Negated or questioned, espérer sometimes flips to the subjunctive (je n'espère pas qu'il vienne) — but in everyday use, j'espère que + indicative is fixed. This is one of the cases where French does not match its Spanish or Italian cousins.

Indirect speech: dire / demander / conseiller as ordering verbs

When dire que, demander que, conseiller que, and similar verbs are used to order or request someone to do something (not just to report a fact), they trigger the subjunctive — because they are now functioning as volition verbs.

In practice, French often replaces demander que + subjunctive with the cleaner demander à quelqu'un de + infinitive (elle a demandé à tout le monde de se taire). The que + subjunctive form is more formal and slightly more emphatic. Likewise, dire que meaning "order" is less common than dire à quelqu'un de + infinitive in conversation.

A nuance: vouloir vs. avoir envie de

When you want yourself to do something, vouloir + infinitive and avoir envie de + infinitive both work — but they are not perfectly synonymous.

• Je veux partir — "I want to leave" — strong, decisive desire.
• J'ai envie de partir — "I feel like leaving" — a felt impulse, often momentary.

When you want someone else to do something, avoir envie que + subjunctive is rarer and slightly informal. Most French speakers use vouloir que in this position.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using the indicative after vouloir que / préférer que / aimer que.

This is the single most common subjunctive mistake among English-speaking learners after il faut que. The English construction "I want you to come" has no equivalent of the subjunctive trigger — English uses a non-finite "to come," so the learner has no signal that French wants a special form. Drill the subjunctive of venir, aller, faire, être, avoir in the que tu and que vous slots until they are automatic.

Mistake 2: Using que je with a coreferential subject.

The error often comes from over-applying the subjunctive rule. The fix is the same-subject test: matching subjects → infinitive, no exceptions.

Mistake 3: Using the subjunctive after espérer que.

Mistake 4: Forgetting à ce que with verbs that require it.

The verbs s'attendre à, tenir à, consentir à, and renoncer à preserve their preposition before que, becoming à ce que. The phonetic effect is heavier than que alone — but it is obligatory and unmistakable in writing.

Mistake 5: Calque from English "I want him do something."

English speakers sometimes drop que on the assumption that French will work like English ("I want him come"). It will not. The que + subjunctive scaffolding is rigid.

Key takeaways

• Verbs of desire and volition (vouloir, préférer, souhaiter, exiger, demander, attendre, s'attendre à ce que, etc.) trigger the subjunctive in the que-clause when the matrix subject and embedded subject are different.
• When the subjects are the same, French does not allow que
  • subjunctive. Use the matrix verb + infinitive: je veux partir, not je veux que je parte.
• Espérer que is the irregular member of this family — it takes the indicative in modern French.
• A handful of verbs (s'attendre, tenir, consentir, renoncer) take à ce que
  • subjunctive instead of plain que
    • subjunctive.
• The vouloir que
  • subjunctive construction is the highest-frequency subjunctive trigger after il faut que — drill it until it is reflexive.
• The two rules (different subjects → subjunctive; same subject → infinitive) are universal in this group: they apply to every volition verb without exception.