Scegliamo un linguaggio che la gente capisca - subjunctive

Question

I have read the following sentence in an Italian learning tool:

Scegliamo un linguaggio che la gente capisca.

Is the subjunctive mood correctly used? If so, why is it used?

Answer 1

Che la gente capisca is a proposizione subordinata relativa (i.e. a relative clause in English). It is hard to decide when a relative clause ought to go in the subjunctive mood or in the indicative mood. I wrote a short breviary with some simple rules that might be of help.

In this case, it is a relative clause referring to something undetermined (since until we choose the language, it is not fixed). Those usually are in the subjunctive, as is the case. The version at the indicative would also be correct, but it would imply that the choice of language is somehow already fixed.