How is the jussive mood rendered in English?

In English the imperative mood is used only for the second person (differently from Italian, where what is called imperative mood is used also for the first, and third person).
How is the jussive mood rendered in English?


Aside from the usage with "Let's", as in 'Let's (contraction: "let us") go to the theater', I am having difficulty thinking of a usage for what I understand to be the jussive mood. The use of 'shall' in Latin (as cited by @stacker 's link in the comments) does not appear to satisfy a third or first person case use of jussive; and it seems more akin to the imperative in some roundabout way. Even if I am commanding myself to go to the store, it is from the (you) person; aka 'you understood', a form of the second person. Moreover, despite the usage of us in "Let's", it is more intuitive as a second person command similar to as commanding oneself is more intuitive as a second person.

It seems the imperative, covering second person subjects, is the only relative of the jussive mood, covering other subject persons, in English usage.


According to the traditional shall/will distinction, shall in third person was similar to the jussive. In the canonical example

I will drown and no one shall save me!

no one shall save me is taken as an order not to save the speaker. (As opposed to "I shall drown and no one will save me!" which is a grammatically correct plea for help.)

I have no idea how widely this grammatical distinction was ever applied. I suspect that it was indeed made by RP speakers during the 19th century, but I am not sure whether it was ever used this way by Americans. Currently, except in first person questions, shall and will are generally synonymous today.

I don't believe that the third person shall has any simple modern English equivalents. You could use "I insist that no one save me."


The 'third person imperative' is rendered as let him; the famous example is in 'Henry V', the speech before Agincourt:

he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made...

I think the same applies to "Let's go", but it's nowhere near as clear, as others have mentioned.