This tense is not necessarily used after conjunctions which in other languages (Latin, for example) govern a subjunctive, but rather when uncertainty, expectation, or contingency is signified, in fact, when in English one would use _may_ as an auxiliary. There is a good deal of confusion between this tense and the imperfect.
_Re_ prefixed to the inflected or inflected auxiliary form of this tense makes it an optative:—
_Re wrellen cara_, would that I might love, etc.
In older Cornish the present, whether in its inflected, impersonal, or auxiliary form, was commonly used to express a future, and sometimes the subjunctive was used as a future. Some verbs have an extra tense which is a specially inflected future, resembling one form of the Breton conditional, as follows:—
This is more commonly found in the impersonal form, _mî_, _tî_, etc., _a garvyth_. It is formed, as may be clearly seen, by suffixing the future or subjunctive of _bos_, to be (perhaps in its sense of “to have” { 140}), to the root of the verb. (Cf. the suffixing of the present of _avoir_ to an infinitive to form a future in French, _je parler-ai_, and its unamalgamated prototype, the future form, _resurgere habent_, in the very low Latin of the antepenultimate verse of the Athanasian Creed.) But in late Cornish the regular future was formed by the auxiliary verb _menny_, to will:—
The forms _mednama_, _menta_, usually in the second state of the initial, are used for interrogative and dependent sentences:—
The negative is either _nî vednav vî cara _or _mî ni vednav cara_.
The latter form, with the _v_ of the termination omitted as being nearly inaudible, is used in Carew’s phrase, _meea navidua cowzasawzneck_, I will speak no English, for _mî na vednav cowsa Sowsnak_.
The passive is formed by the present of _menny_, the infinitive of _bos_, and the past participle:—
2. _car_, love thou. 2. _careugh_, love ye.
3. _cares_ (or _carens_), let him 3. _carens_, let them love. love.
3. _gwrens cara_ or _gwrens e cara_. 3. _gwrens ŷ cara_.
Of these, _môs_ and _dôn_ are each made up of two different verbs. The irregularities of _dôs_, _drŷ_, and _rŷ_ are due to contractions, and those of _gŏdhvas_ chiefly to its being compounded with _bos_, to be.