Irrealis mood

In linguistics, irrealis moods are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. They are used in statements without truth value
Every language has grammatical ways of expressing unreality. Linguists tend to reserve the term "irrealis" for particular morphological markers or clause types. Many languages with irrealis mood make further subdivisions between kinds of irrealis moods. This is especially so among Algonquian languages such as Blackfoot.

List of irrealis moods

Mood	Event, as intended by speaker	Example	Found in
Subjunctive	Event is considered unlikely.	"If I were to love you..."
Conditional	Event depends upon another condition.	"I would love you"
Optative	Event is hoped, expected, or awaited.	"May I be loved!"
Jussive	Event is pleaded, implored or asked.	"Everyone should be loved"
Potential	Event is probable or considered likely	"She probably loves me"
Imperative Prohibitive	Event is directly ordered or requested by the speaker. Event is directly prohibited by the speaker.	"Love me!" "Do not love me"
Desiderative	Event is desired/wished by a participant in the state of affairs referred to in the utterance	"I wish he loved me."
Dubitative	Event is uncertain, doubtful, dubious.	"I think she loves me."
Hypothetical	Event is hypothetical, or it is counterfactual, but possible.	"I might love you "
Presumptive	Event is assumed, presupposed by the speaker.	"Knowing the way you love me "
Permissive	Event is permitted by the speaker.	"You may love me..."
Mirative Admirative	Event is surprising or amazing.	"Wow! They love me!", "Apparently they love me."
Hortative	Event is exhorted, implored, insisted or encouraged by speaker.	"Let us love!"
	Event is likely but depends upon a condition; a combination of the potential and conditional.	"I would probably love you "
	Event is requested by the speaker.	"Will you love me?"	Mongolian
Volitive	Event is desired, wished or feared by the speaker.	"Would that you loved me!" / "God forbid you love me!"	Japanese
Inferential	Event is not witnessed and not confirmed.	"Something tells me she loves me."
Necessitative	Event is necessary, or it is both desired and encouraged; a combination of the hortative and jussive.	"It is necessary that you should love me."
Interrogative	Event is asked or questioned by the speaker	"Does he love me?"
Benedictive	Event is requested or wished by the speaker in a polite or honorific fashion.	"Would you please be so kind as to love me?"
	Event is presupposed or admitted as part of a refutation.	"Even if she loves me "; "Although she loves me "
	Event is prescribed by the speaker, but with the expectation that it will occur.	"Please love me."; "Go ahead, love me."	Mongolian
	Event is warned against happening.	"Beware loving me."

Moods

Subjunctive

The subjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses in dependent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events, expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests. A subjunctive mood exists in English, but it often is not obligatory. Example: "I suggested that Paul an apple", Paul is not in fact eating an apple. Contrast this with the sentence "Paul an apple", where the verb "to eat" is in the present tense, indicative mood. Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be "I suggested that Paul an apple", derived from "Paul should eat an apple."
Other uses of the subjunctive in English, as in "And not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass...", have become archaic or formal. Statements such as "I shall ensure that immediately" often are formal, and often have been supplanted by constructions with the indicative, such as "I'll make sure immediately".
The subjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of the Romance languages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. This point commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
In certain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may be employed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events.

Conditional

The conditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent upon another condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditional sentences. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the form would + infinitive, e.g., I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish or French, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. This applies also to some verbs in German, in which the conditional mood is conventionally called Konjunktiv II, differing from Konjunktiv I. Thus, the conditional version of "John eats if he is hungry" is:
In the Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis of conditional clauses, and in a few set phrases where it expresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood. However, this is not a universal trait: among others, in German and in Finnish the conditional mood is used in both the apodosis and the protasis.
A further example of Finnish conditional is the sentence "I would buy a house if I earned a lot of money", where in Finnish both clauses have the conditional marker -isi-: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa, just like in Hungarian, which uses the marker -na/-ne/-ná/-né: Vennék egy házat, ha sokat keresnék. In Polish, the conditional marker -by also appears twice: Kupiłbym dom, gdybym zarabiał dużo pieniędzy. Because English is used as a lingua franca, a similar kind of doubling of the word 'would' is a fairly common way to misuse an English language construction.
In French, while the standard language requires the indicative in the dependent clause, using the conditional mood in both clauses is frequently used by some speakers: Si j instead of Si j. This usage is heavily stigmatized. However, '''J is more accepted, as a colloquial form.
In the literary language, past unreal conditional sentences as above may take the pluperfect subjunctive in one clause or both, so that the following sentences are all valid and have the same meaning as the preceding example: Si j; Si j; Si j.

Optative

The optative mood expresses hopes, wishes or commands. Other uses may overlap with the subjunctive mood. Few languages have an optative as a distinct mood; some that do are Albanian, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Finnish, Avestan.
In Finnish, the mood may be called an "archaic" or "formal imperative", even if it has other uses; nevertheless, it at least expresses formality. For example, the ninth Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with:
where älköön pidätettäkö "shall not be arrested" is the imperative of ei pidätetä "is not arrested". Also, using the conditional mood -isi- in conjunction with the clitic -pa yields an optative meaning: olisinpa "if only I were". Here, it is evident that the wish has not been fulfilled and probably will not be.
In Sanskrit, the optative is formed by adding the secondary endings to the verb stem. The optative, as other moods, is found in active voice and middle voice. Examples: bhares "may you bear" and bharethaas "may you bear ". The optative may not only express wishes, requests and commands, but also possibilities, e.g., kadaacid goshabdena budhyeta "he might perhaps wake up due to the bellowing of cows", doubt and uncertainty, e.g., katham vidyaam Nalam "how would I be able to recognize Nala?" The optative may further be used instead of a conditional mood.

Jussive

The jussive mood expresses plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. In some languages, this is distinguished from the cohortative mood in that the cohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third. It is found in Arabic, where it is called the مجزوم , and also in Hebrew and in the constructed language Esperanto. The rules governing the jussive in Arabic are somewhat complex.

Potential

The potential mood is a mood of probability indicating that, in the opinion of the speaker, the action or occurrence is considered likely. It is used in many languages, including in Finnish, Japanese, and Sanskrit, and in the Sami languages.
In Finnish, it is mostly a literary device, as it has virtually disappeared from daily spoken language in most dialects. Its suffix is -ne-, as in *men + ne + e → mennee " will probably go". Some kinds of consonant clusters simplify to geminates. In spoken language, the word kai "probably" is used instead, e.g., se kai tulee "he probably comes", instead of hän tullee.