Word
Il sovrano spietato esigeva che tutti uscissero immediatamente.
Meaning
The ruthless sovereign demanded that everyone leave immediately.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Il sovrano spietato esigeva che tutti uscissero immediatamente.
tutto
everything
uscire
to go out
immediatamente
immediately
che
that (conjunction introducing a clause)
Questions & Answers about Il sovrano spietato esigeva che tutti uscissero immediatamente.
Why is uscissero in the imperfect subjunctive instead of the present subjunctive?
The main verb expressing the command, esigeva, is in a past tense (the imperfect). According to Italian sequence of tenses, a past-tense verb of commanding or requesting followed by che requires the imperfect subjunctive in the dependent clause to show the action happens at the same time or after the main verb.
Could we use the di + infinitive structure here instead of che tutti uscissero?
No, because the subjects of the two clauses are different. The sovereign (il sovrano) is doing the demanding, but a different group (tutti) is doing the leaving. You use di + infinitive for reported commands mostly when the subject remains the same, or if the main verb takes an indirect object (e.g., Ha ordinato loro di uscire). Because esigere introduces a brand-new subject here, you must use che + subjunctive.
The English translation says "demanded that everyone leave". Why doesn't Italian just use a present-tense verb to match "leave"?
In English, "leave" here is actually the English subjunctive (notice it isn't "leaves", even though "everyone" is singular). While English uses this base form no matter when the demand happened, Italian's strict sequence of tenses requires the past-tense imperfect subjunctive (uscissero) to mathematically match the past tense of the main verb (esigeva).
What is the origin of the word spietato?