“No es que sea caro”: the subjunctive for what everyone already knows
CEFR C1
“Si hubiera sabido…”: the past that did not happenThe unreal past: “si hubiera sabido, habría venido”, and the mixed conditions where one…“Por más que lo intente”, “a fin de que sepas”The conjunctions that always take the subjunctive —“para que”, “a fin de que”, “sin…What you can say to whomTelling apart what belongs in a message to a friend, in an email to a stranger and in a…“Por” and “para”, the hard halfThe pairs where both are possible and the meaning changes: “estar por” against “estar…“Ponerse”, “volverse”, “hacerse”, “quedarse”: four “become”Choosing among the four: “ponerse” for a passing state, “volverse” for a lasting change…What people write and what people sayWhat changes between the two: the “ser” passive, “cuyo”, the tenses that survive only in…The rule, in three lines
There is a last criterion that no trigger list covers: when the sentence denies the reason instead of the fact, or takes the fact as its starting point, the verb goes to the subjunctive. No es que sea caro — nobody denies the price. Que sea joven no lo disculpa — he is young, and that is where the sentence starts.
The usual slip. Hunting for a trigger word, finding none, and defaulting to the indicative: no es que es caro.
Why it catches you out. By this level you carry a list of triggers in your head and it has served you well, which is exactly why these sentences are invisible: nothing in “no es que” looks like the verbs of wanting and doubting you learnt it from. English marks old information with word order and stress and never with the verb, so there is no habit to bring across — only a list to stop trusting. One warning: “el hecho de que” belongs here by meaning, but real Spanish accepts both moods after it, so this unit does not drill it.