I keep hearing about the 'subjunctive' - what is it? Do I need it? How do I recognise it?

The subjunctive mood can tend to seem a bit terrifying, but it's not as bad as it looks and you shouldn't have to worry about it too much for your exams at GCSE level. There are two forms of the subjunctive (or 'Konjunktiv') in German: Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II. The first one is used to show that you're reporting somebody else's speech for them (e.g. 'He said that he's tired' = 'er sagte, er sei müde'). You'll often see this one written down in newspaper articles when the reporter is paraphrasing what somebody else has said. The second one is used to talk about hypothetical situations, where you're describing something that either isn't real or did not/will not happen (e.g. 'I wish I were a gymnast' = 'Ich wünsche, ich wäre ein Turner"). You might see this one in a written conversation between two characters, or maybe even hear it in a speaking exam. Thankfully, both of these are really simple to recognise, once you get the hang of it (even if they're a bit harder to write for yourself!)The reason that these two types of 'Konjunktiv' are linked together is that, if you're unable to use the first one when you need to, you need to use the second one. To keep it short and simple for now, I'll show how to use the first one for a simple verb like 'haben':Ich habeDu habestEr/Sie/Es habeWir habenIhr habetSie habenYou'll notice that, other than the ones I've underlined, the verb looks the same as it does in the present tense! You basically just get the stem of the verb by taking off the '-en' ending and then add on the regular endings, but without changing the stem as you normally would when putting a verb into the present tense. So when you see or hear a that looks a bit unusual like 'er habe' or 'er mache', you can be pretty certain that you're dealing with the Konjunktiv I.However, as with most things in German, this is faaar too simple and needs to be more complicated. So, when you're converting a verb into Konjunktiv I and realise that it looks the same as the normal present tense would, then you need to move it into Konjunktiv II to avoid any confusion - in this case, you'd need to do it for any of the verbs above which weren't underlined. So, here's how to make a regular verb in the Konjunktiv II (which you use all the time when talking about hypothetical situations!)Take the normal imperfect endings for a regular verb (e.g. ich hatte, du hattest, etc.)If possible, put an umlaut accent over any of the vowels in the verb That's it!So when you see something jarring-looking like 'ich hätte' or 'du hättest', then you can be fairly sure that you're either seeing or hearing reported speech or a hypothetical situation being described - it should be clear from context which it is!So that's what the subjunctive is in German and how to recognise it.