indicativo

Indicativo, or indicative mood, is a grammatical category used to express statements of fact and reality. In many languages, particularly Romance languages, the indicative is the default mood for declarative sentences and questions about real events. It contrasts with other moods that express doubt, wishes, commands, or hypothetical situations, such as the subjunctive or the imperative.

In Spanish grammar, the indicative includes several tenses formed with inflected verbs. It covers present, past (preterite and imperfect), future, and conditional, as well as compound tenses formed with haber, like present perfect (he hablado) and past perfect (había hablado). Example in present: “hablo” (I speak). In past: “hablé” (I spoke) and “hablaba” (I was speaking). In future: “hablaré”; in conditional: “hablaría.” These forms are used to state facts, describe routines, or narrate events.

Across Romance languages, the indicative mood serves a similar function, though each language has its own tense system and conjugation patterns. The term indicativo is used in Spanish and Portuguese; in French, the corresponding term is indicatif, and in Italian Indicativo is the term as well. In non-Romance languages, the mood may have different names or divisions but often fulfills the same communicative role.