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In English the imperative mood is used only for the second person (differently from Italian, where what is called imperative mood is used also for the first, and third person).
How is the jussive mood rendered in English?

apaderno
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussive_mood – stacker Aug 18 '10 at 19:18
  • Could you try to render a case-use of the jussive mood from another language into english? As in, how would you use the imperative to command he/she/it/them separately from the second person? – mfg Aug 20 '10 at 12:14
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    @mfg: I know how I would say in Italian, but the same "trick" is not possible in English, where a verb usually changes only for the third person. In Italian, to use the jussative we don't say the subject (sbrighiamoci!; mangiamo e beviamo!); if I would do the same in English, I would say hurry up!, eat and drink! which would be understood as referring to the second person. In Italian, I eat is different from you eat (io mangio, tu mangi). – apaderno Aug 20 '10 at 13:12
  • Uhmmm… I meant jussive, in my previous comment. – apaderno Dec 30 '11 at 14:26
  • There are enough articles on the jussive readily available from search engines. There is a section in Thought & Co that explains the jussive with examples: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-jussive-1691089#:~:text="Jussives%20include%20not%20only%20imperatives,Everybody%20listen. – Greybeard Oct 30 '22 at 10:41

4 Answers4

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According to the traditional shall/will distinction, shall in third person was similar to the jussive. In the canonical example

I will drown and no one shall save me!

no one shall save me is taken as an order not to save the speaker. (As opposed to "I shall drown and no one will save me!" which is a grammatically correct plea for help.)

I have no idea how widely this grammatical distinction was ever applied. I suspect that it was indeed made by RP speakers during the 19th century, but I am not sure whether it was ever used this way by Americans. Currently, except in first person questions, shall and will are generally synonymous today.

I don't believe that the third person shall has any simple modern English equivalents. You could use "I insist that no one save me."

Peter Shor
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  • Not sure that shall and will are generally synonymous even today, but +1 for the canonical example. – Tim Lymington Dec 30 '11 at 14:31
  • @Tim: Maybe not in southern England, which I have read is the source of the traditional shall/will distinction, but I don't believe Americans perceive a difference. – Peter Shor Dec 30 '11 at 14:43
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Aside from the usage with "Let's", as in 'Let's (contraction: "let us") go to the theater', I am having difficulty thinking of a usage for what I understand to be the jussive mood. The use of 'shall' in Latin (as cited by @stacker 's link in the comments) does not appear to satisfy a third or first person case use of jussive; and it seems more akin to the imperative in some roundabout way. Even if I am commanding myself to go to the store, it is from the (you) person; aka 'you understood', a form of the second person. Moreover, despite the usage of us in "Let's", it is more intuitive as a second person command similar to as commanding oneself is more intuitive as a second person.

It seems the imperative, covering second person subjects, is the only relative of the jussive mood, covering other subject persons, in English usage.

mfg
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    Agreed. I always thought "Let's go" was hortatory subjunctive. – moioci Aug 21 '10 at 04:18
  • I'm pretty sure I don't understand what the jussive mood is, but what mood are "They ought to go", "They must go", "They should go", "They better go", and "It is better that they go"? (I know these overlap…) – ShreevatsaR Mar 02 '11 at 06:18
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    @ShreevatsaR: The jussive mood is like the imperative mood, but it is applied for all the three persons; if "go!" is the imperative, the English jussive would be something like "go you!", "go us!", "go them!" (which is not how English renders the jussive). – apaderno Mar 02 '11 at 09:39
  • @kiamlaluno: 'Applied to all three persons' seems an incidental feature of morphology; AFAIK these "moods" are defined based on conceptual/semantic criteria, right? (Wrong?) What does it mean? That's why I asked about the mood of the sentences above. (Also, in "Why should I go? Let him go", what mood is the second sentence?) I assumed the question was about how to express in English the same meaning that would be expressed by the jussive mood in Italian. But since I don't know anything, if it will be too hard to explain to me, nevermind. :-) – ShreevatsaR Mar 02 '11 at 10:07
  • @ShreevatsaR: the question is how the jussive mood is rendered in English. Latin, for example, used the present subjunctive to render the jussive mood; in Italian, the jussive mood is rendered using the simple present without subject. – apaderno Mar 02 '11 at 14:04
  • @kiam: And what's the answer? That the jussive mood cannot be rendered in English? That there exists some meaning which simply cannot be expressed in English, even by using a lot of words? I find this hard to believe… – ShreevatsaR Mar 03 '11 at 08:47
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    @ShreevatsaR: Basing on the answer given by mfg, I would not say that the jussive cannot be rendered in English. – apaderno Mar 03 '11 at 20:00
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    @Shreev unless there is some borrowing somewhere, I would have to say no. For instance, in French you have the third person pronoun 'on'; which is kind of plural, but is conjugated and used as singular but refers to a mass of people. It's one of those French 101 scenarios where the students just don't get it at all, and basically just go with it. Maybe a Canadian might be able to account for its viability, but as a native English speaker, most difficulties are just skipped or borrowed without translation. – mfg Mar 03 '11 at 23:29
  • I'm not sure what "no" means: are you saying that the jussive mood cannot be rendered in English? To me this is what your answer seems to say: it says "difficulty thinking of a usage for […] the jussive mood" and elaborates on it. So why does @kiamlaluno (and someone else, who upvoted his comment) draw the opposite conclusion from your answer? :-) [I can well believe—and it's obviously true—that there exist grammatical features in other languages that are absent in English, but that there are inexpressible meanings is harder to believe. For instance you just explained French 'on'.] – ShreevatsaR Mar 04 '11 at 06:27
  • @Shree Moods, like jussive, are expressed in English using "modals" like might can, must, shall, should, will, would, etc. Jussive, a species of the irrealis mood, indicates that something is not currently the case, but you are pleading for it to be the case. However, the problem I bring up in the answer is that jussive doesn't translate in English well because it has no determined modal verb (i.e. shall in particular), and it is too similar to the imperative and subjunctive in usage; "Let us / Let's" and "They shall" don't have the same feel of pleading indicated by the jussive tense. – mfg Mar 04 '11 at 16:54
  • Ah yes, the English Jussive. May it rest in peace. –  Oct 30 '22 at 05:55
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The 'third person imperative' is rendered as let him; the famous example is in 'Henry V', the speech before Agincourt:

he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made...

I think the same applies to "Let's go", but it's nowhere near as clear, as others have mentioned.

Tim Lymington
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I would say "you must", as in "you must forgive me" or "... you must come with us".

RegDwigнt
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Penny
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