Learn French: Nous sommes tristes qu'ils construisent une autoroute près de la crèche. - We are sad that they are building a highway near the daycare.

We use the subjunctive here because of the phrase Nous sommes tristes que (We are sad that). In French, verbs that express a strong emotion or feeling—like sadness, joy, or fear—require the subjunctive in the clause that follows que.

Construisent looks exactly like the normal present tense. Is it really the subjunctive?

Yes, it is! For most verbs, the ils/elles form of the subjunctive is identical to the regular present tense (the indicative). To find the subjunctive stem, you take the ils form of the present tense (construisent), drop the -ent, and add the subjunctive ending for ils, which is also -ent. It looks the same, but it is grammatically in the subjunctive here.

If the subjects were the same (like "We are sad that we are building..."), would we still use que and the subjunctive?

No. When the person feeling the emotion is the same person doing the action, you drop the que and use de followed by the infinitive. For example: Nous sommes tristes de construire... (We are sad to build...). Because this sentence has two different subjects (nous and ils), we have to use que plus the subjunctive.

Why is it près de la crèche instead of près du crèche?