20.1.1 The subjunctive forms of verbs could be described as expressing hypothetical actions and situations, as opposed to the real ones expressed by the indicative. In English, the subjunctive is little used, only occurring in isolated cases like ‘long live the king’, ‘the judge recommended he do community service’ and ‘if I were you’. But the Portuguese subjunctive is in frequent and systematic use as certain syntactic and semantic contexts require it. These contexts will be examined below.