FR: il est à souhaiter que + mode

[Boleslaw]

Hello all!
I would like to ask you can give some examples of your own or from any source about using this structure with INDICATIF. I heard it is not always used with subjonctif. But I cannot find proof to substantiate this.
Might you help me?

 

[Michelvar]

Hi!

It would be "il est à souhaiter que...", and I don't see any way to use it with indicatif.

 

[GerardM]

Hi Boleslaw, Michelvar,

[…]

> I heard it is not always used with subjonctif. But I cannot find proof to substantiate this.

I second Michelvar.
"Il est à souhaiter que" is high level French language. I cannot think of indicative behind this phrase.

 

[lucas-sp]

There are other examples of the underlying structure "Il est à X que..." that do not take the subjunctive - for instance "Il est à noter que..."

I'm not exactly sure if this is your question, though. My understanding is that things à souhaiter are always in the subjunctive. As a phrase, it has even more uncertainty in tone than "Je souhaite que..."

 

[Michelvar]

Lucas-sp is right, subjunctive in French is not only a matter of sentence construction, it is also a matter of meaning. With uncertainty followed by "que", you must have subjunctive, whereas "il est à noter que", no uncertainty, no subjunctive.

 

[geostan]

Think of Il est à souhaiter que as a synonym of Il est souhaitable que. I'm sure you would always used the subjunctive after the second expression. The same would therefore be true for the first.