Subjunctive in Independent Clauses

Most of what textbooks say about the subjunctive is that it belongs inside subordinate clauses — quero que venhas, é pena que estejas doente, espero que tudo corra bem. That is where the subjunctive does most of its work. But Portuguese also allows the subjunctive to stand on its own, with no matrix verb above it, as the main verb of an independent clause. When it does, it takes on a special expressive force: a wish, a blessing, a curse, a permission, a counterfactual regret. This page is the full map of that terrain.

European Portuguese keeps many of these independent-clause subjunctives alive in ordinary speech, far more so than English does. A Portuguese speaker saying oxalá não chova ("hopefully it won't rain") or quem me dera estar contigo ("I wish I were with you") is not reaching for something literary — they are using the most natural tool for the job. Once you internalise the logic, you will hear these constructions everywhere.

Oxalá — the optative par excellence

The word oxalá is Portuguese's dedicated optative particle. It is pronounced [oʃɐˈla] and means roughly "hopefully" or "if only" or "may it be that." Historically it is a direct loan from Arabic in shā’a llāh ("God willing"), brought into Iberian Romance during the centuries of Moorish rule and preserved almost identically in Spanish (ojalá) and Portuguese. You cannot translate it with a single English word, because English no longer has a productive optative.

Oxalá always triggers the subjunctive in the clause it introduces. There is no alternative. The tense of the subjunctive tells you the temporal and modal flavour of the wish.

With the present subjunctive, oxalá expresses a wish about something still possible — the outcome is open, the future is undecided. With the imperfect subjunctive, it expresses a wish against the current state of affairs — something you know is not (or is unlikely to be) the case.

With the pluperfect subjunctive, oxalá expresses a counterfactual wish about the past — something you wish had happened differently but can no longer change.

Three tenses, three different shades of wishing: the open future, the counterfactual present, the counterfactual past. English has to paraphrase all three ("I hope...", "I wish...", "I wish... had..."); Portuguese just varies the subjunctive tense after the same word.

Compared with Spanish ojalá, the Portuguese oxalá is slightly less colloquial. A young Spanish speaker will use ojalá dozens of times a day; a young Portuguese speaker will use oxalá with a little more weight, often in contexts where the wish matters. In casual everyday speech, espero que + subjunctive is more common. But oxalá is alive and well in Portugal, and every learner should own it.

Quem me dera — the signature Portuguese wish

If oxalá is the Iberian optative, quem me dera is the specifically Portuguese one. There is nothing like it in Spanish. Literally it means "who would give (it) to me," as a frozen exclamation — a rhetorical question that expects no answer, used to express a deeply felt wish. The construction is idiomatic and cannot be unpacked productively; you learn it whole.

Quem me dera is always followed either by a bare infinitive (personal or impersonal) or by que + imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive. Both patterns are fully current in modern European Portuguese.

The past counterfactual version uses the pluperfect subjunctive (or its compound form with tivesse + past participle) and translates English "I wish I had...":

The pronoun me in quem me dera is not replaceable in most uses — the construction is fossilised. You will occasionally encounter quem nos dera ("if only we had...") in speech, and quem lhe dera ("if only he/she had...") in literary texts, but these are rhetorical extensions. For a learner, always use quem me dera, even when the wish is about other people:

The me here is the speaker's first-person wish; the content of the wish is about someone else.

Que + present subjunctive — wishes, commands, blessings

One of the most productive independent-clause subjunctive patterns in Portuguese is que + present subjunctive at the start of a sentence. It expresses a third-person wish, command, or blessing — roughly equivalent to English "may..." or "let..." These are structurally incomplete sentences: underneath, there is an implicit desejo que or permito que, but speakers never say it.

The que + subjunctive pattern is the default way to issue a third-person imperative in Portuguese. The regular imperative mood only has tu, você/vós, nós forms; for ele or eles, you fall back to que + present subjunctive.

It is also the form Portuguese reaches for when granting permission or consent:

Wishes and toasts

When the wish is more heartfelt — a toast, a birthday greeting, a blessing at the end of a letter — speakers often use que + present subjunctive with no matrix verb and no explicit addressee. The construction is felt as formulaic and celebratory.

These are idiomatic; you should memorise a handful and recognise the pattern. Notice that the stage-setting English auxiliary "may" simply disappears — Portuguese carries the optative meaning on the subjunctive alone.

Tomara que — less European, more Brazilian

The construction tomara que + subjunctive ("if only," "I hope") is common in Brazilian Portuguese but much rarer in European Portuguese. You will hear it in songs and see it in older Portuguese texts, but a modern Lisbon speaker is unlikely to use it in neutral conversation — they would reach for oxalá or espero que instead.

If you are learning European Portuguese, recognise tomara que when you hear it, but default to oxalá or espero que in your own speech.

Seja o que for, venha o que vier — frozen concessives

European Portuguese has a small set of fossilised independent-clause subjunctives that function as concessive adverbials — "whatever...", "come what may...", "be that as it may." They combine the present subjunctive of a verb with a wh-element inside a little frozen frame. You treat them as fixed expressions.

These constructions pair the present subjunctive with the future subjunctive of the same verb (seja... for, aconteça... acontecer, venha... vier, custe... custar, diga... disser, faça... fizer). The present subjunctive expresses the concessive wish; the future subjunctive expresses the "whenever / whatever happens" conditional clause. The pattern is completely productive with almost any verb; if you understand the template, you can build your own.

These fixed concessives are one of the most Portuguese-sounding features of the language, and they are a small tell that separates fluent learners from beginners. Spanish has sea como sea and pase lo que pase, but the productivity and frequency in Portuguese is markedly higher, because EP keeps the future subjunctive fully alive (see future subjunctive common expressions).

Pudera — the single-word exclamation

One of the most idiomatic stand-alone verb forms in European Portuguese is pudera! It is a frozen exclamation meaning something like "of course!" / "no wonder!" / "you bet!" Etymologically it is the first-person or third-person singular synthetic pluperfect of poder ("could"), though in the -ra forms the line between indicative pluperfect and the older -ra imperfect subjunctive is historically blurred. Either way, no modern speaker parses it — it is a single-word reply with its own frozen meaning, and it is well worth memorising as part of the independent-clause optative family even though, strictly speaking, its paradigm cell is indicative.

Pudera! has a slightly old-fashioned, colourful flavour, but is alive in everyday speech, especially in Portugal. It has no direct Spanish equivalent — Spanish would use ¡claro! or ¡cómo no!, both indicative. This is a small but telling example of how the subjunctive has bled into the lexicon as a ready-made interjection.

Somewhat similarly, quisera ("I would have liked") is used as a single-word response expressing regretful assent, especially in literary or elevated register:

Embora + subjunctive — dismissal, departure

The form vá embora! ("go away!") is technically a third-person imperative, but a related independent-clause subjunctive pattern deserves a mention: when embora introduces a main clause on its own, it governs the subjunctive. In most uses, embora is a concessive conjunction meaning "although" (see concessive clauses). But in fossilised independent constructions, embora que + subjunctive* can stand alone as "granted that...," and in older texts you sometimes see embora + subjunctive + exclamation mark as a concessive interjection ("so be it," "fine then").

More commonly in everyday speech, embora is sent to the end of an imperative as an adverb of departure:

The independent-clause subjunctive with embora is now mostly a feature of written or literary register.

The rhetorical subjunctive — hypothetical reasoning

European Portuguese uses the imperfect subjunctive as a stand-alone verb for hypothetical reasoning in a way English cannot easily imitate. The speaker raises a hypothesis without explicitly saying "suppose..." or "what if...":

These are inverted conditional clauses — a se ("if") is implicit, and the subjunctive verb comes first, before the subject. The result is a slightly more literary, more elegant version of se + imperfect subjunctive. English preserves this pattern only in frozen idioms ("were I you...", "had I known..."); Portuguese uses it productively.

The subjunctive here is genuinely functioning as a main-clause verb in its own right — the se clause has been demoted into a mere subjunctive onset, and the following indicative or conditional takes over as the main assertion.

Comparison with Spanish ojalá and the wider Romance picture

Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician all inherit oxalá / ojalá / oxalá from the same Arabic source. But the behaviour of the surrounding subjunctive repertoire differs:

• Spanish uses ojalá constantly in everyday speech, often with a "que" that may or may not appear (ojalá (que) llueva). It does not have a productive equivalent of quem me dera. For "I wish...," a Spanish speaker will say ojalá or the more bookish quisiera.
• Portuguese uses oxalá a bit less frequently than Spanish does ojalá (preferring espero que in casual speech), but compensates with quem me dera, which has no Spanish counterpart. European Portuguese also keeps the future subjunctive alive (see future subjunctive vs Spanish usage), which feeds the seja o que for / venha o que vier frames with a vitality Spanish lacks.
• French and Italian have lost most independent-clause subjunctive uses in modern speech. French has que vienne ("let him come") in formal registers only. Italian keeps che venga similarly.

In short, Portuguese is unusually rich in independent-clause subjunctives for a modern Romance language, and European Portuguese is the richest variety of Portuguese in this respect.

Putting it together

Here is a single paragraph of natural Portuguese speech, using five different independent-clause subjunctives in context. See if you can identify each one.

Ai, pá. Oxalá este tempo melhore até ao fim-de-semana, senão o casamento vai ser um desastre. Quem me dera poder adiar tudo por um mês, mas já não há volta a dar. Aconteça o que acontecer, temos de aparecer com um sorriso na cara. E diga o que disser a minha sogra — e ela vai dizer muito, pudera — nós cumprimos o que prometemos.

The five independent-clause subjunctives: oxalá ... melhore (wish), quem me dera poder (counterfactual wish), aconteça o que acontecer (concessive), diga o que disser (concessive), pudera (exclamation). A fluent speaker will produce all five without thinking — and if you can too, you have crossed an important threshold in Portuguese.

Common mistakes

The indicative chove is a simple statement ("it rains"); oxalá cannot accept it.

Treat quem me dera as a single unit, not as a decomposable verb phrase.

The opening que signals irrealis; the indicative cannot follow.

Seja ... for: both slots are subjunctive, one present and one future. Memorise the frame.

Past counterfactual wishes take the pluperfect subjunctive (tivesse + past participle), not the indicative pluperfect.

Key takeaways

• The subjunctive can appear as the main verb of an independent clause, without any matrix quero que or espero que. In that position it always carries irrealis meaning: a wish, blessing, command, concession, or counterfactual.
• Oxalá (from Arabic in shā’a llāh) is the dedicated optative particle. With present subjunctive = "hopefully"; with imperfect subjunctive = "I wish I were..."; with pluperfect subjunctive = "I wish I had..."
• Quem me dera is the specifically Portuguese counterfactual wish, with no Spanish counterpart. Treat it as a frozen idiom and follow it with an infinitive or que
  • imperfect/pluperfect subjunctive.
• Que
  • present subjunctive
  forms third-person imperatives, wishes, blessings, and permissions: que entre!, que tenha um bom dia, que seja!
• Frozen concessive frames like seja o que for, venha o que vier, custe o que custar pair the present subjunctive with the future subjunctive and are a hallmark of idiomatic European Portuguese.
• Pudera! is a single-word imperfect subjunctive exclamation meaning "no wonder!" Commit it to memory.
• Inverted hypotheticals (fosse eu rico, ...) use the imperfect subjunctive as a main-clause verb in place of a full se-clause, especially in literary register.
• Portuguese is unusually rich in independent-clause subjunctives among modern Romance languages; mastering them is the step that makes your Portuguese sound native, not merely correct.