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For example if I wanted to say
'I would develop a system that would make kids want to learn',
I would say
'desarrollaría un sistema que haría los niños quieren aprender.'
However the correct sentence is supposedly
'desarrollaría un sistema que haría que los niños quieren aprender.'
I don't understand the purpose of the que here. Under what circumstances is this grammar structure used?
The meaningful translation is: "Desarrollaría un sistema que haga que los niños quieran aprender".
First, you need to use the correct verb mood (present tense of subjunctive mood). Look at "Haga" and "Quieran" forms. Both are present of subjunctive mood from "Hacer" and "Querer", respectively.
Second, as a rule, subjunctive mood should have normally the relative pronoun "que", for example, "que yo haga", "que yo quiera", etc. This is to express wish.
When subjunctive mood is used with the conjunction "si", to express condition, normally past tense subjunctive mood is used, for example, "si yo hiciera", "si yo quisiera"
You can learn more of subjunctive mood in several places over the internet, for example, http://spanish.about.com/od/verbmoods/a/when_to_use_subjunctive.htm.
Note: this is what I’ve been taught in high-school. Generally, grammar in high-school isn’t too accurate, but I hope it'll do here.
Tl;dr: you need a "que" to mark a change in the subject. It's optional in the cases where the subject of the subordinate is present (both as a subject or as an object) in the main clause, being necessary if the subordinate clause is finite, and unnecessary if it's nonfinite.
First of all, pretty much all finite (personal) subordinate clauses require an introductory “que” in Spanish. Sometimes that “que” works as a pronoun, and others it is just a linker with no semantic content. The sentence at hand would be an example of the latter.
Secondly, it is note-worthy that if you translated your sentence to Spanish word by word, you’d get something like:
Desarrollaría un sistema que haría a los niños querer aprender.
Note how the verb “want” is an infinitive in English, not an inflected form. This is made evident by changing the subject to a third person singular:
I would develop a system that would make her want [not wants] to learn.
The problem with the literal translation is that whereas it is quite common to add a subject to impersonal forms in English, it is not so in Spanish. The only case where a verb in its impersonal form would take a subject in Spanish is when the subject in the main clause is the same as the one in the subordinate clause, so it becomes an implicit subject, or when there’s a noun or a pronoun in the main clause that marks the subject of the subordinate clause. Compare:
Quiero cantar. (I want to sing)
Quiero que cantes. (I want you to sing)
In the first case, the subject of the main clause ("quiero") is “yo”, so the subordinate verb (“cantar”) is in an impersonal form (an infinitive) with the same implicit subject (I want [me] to sing). In the second case, the subject of the subordinate clause is “tú”, which is not the same as the one in the main clause (“yo”). Since impersonal forms can only take subjects that are present in the main clause, and given that “tú” isn’t present in “quiero”, you must use a personal form (“cantes”), even though you would use an impersonal form in English (“to sing”). Now let’s take a look at a different and grammatically relevant example:
Me gustaría cantar. (I’d like to sing)
Me gustaría que cantes. (I’d like you to sing)
The subject of the main clause is the same in both sentences: the subordinate clause (keep in mind in Spanish, the subject of the verb “like” is the object liked, not the one who likes). In the first sentence the subject of the impersonal form of the verb “cantar” is an implicit “yo”. Here, the subject of the main clause isn’t “yo”; however, the personal pronoun “me” works as a marker of the implicit subject of the subordinate clause. That’s why you can use an impersonal form. In the second sentence, there’s no pronoun whatsoever marking the subject of the subordinate clause (“tú”, “te”), so an impersonal form wouldn’t work here.
Now you now when you need to use the impersonal form of the subordinated verb and when not to. Once you know you need to conjugate it, you also know you need a “que” working as a linker (see the first paragraph).
Now, the sentence you want to translate is a specially complicated one. Grammarians disagree about the function of subordinate clauses introduced by the verbs “hacer” and “dejar”. I actually asked a related question not too long ago, and from the answers I got it seems some grammarians consider it to be a complemento predicativo. I don’t fully agree with that, but what I can say for sure is that it is not a direct object. However, the aforementioned rule applies: if there’s any pronoun/noun in the main clause marking the subject of the subordinate one, or both clauses have the same subject, then you can use an impersonal verb form and therefore you don’t need a “que”. Otherwise, you need a personal form and therefore you need a “que”.
Your sentence, if translated literally (i.e., keeping the verb impersonal), isn’t grammatically wrong because you have mentioned the implicit subject of the subordinate clause (los niños) in the main clause ("a los niños", which can be substituted by “les”). However, it doesn’t sound just as natural as the conjugated version (which requires a “que”, as explained above):
Desarrollaría un sistema que haría que los niños quieran aprender.
Pretty much anytime, in English, where you'd use the word which or that, you would use que in your translation/interpretation.
It's a fool-proof method, though, I never recommend using English as a basis for understanding Spanish, unless it actually seem relevant / has some kind of linguistic similarity
The best way to think of it, though it may be a bit advanced, but if you need to create a subordinate clause, then you're going to need to use que to initiate.
The sentence is an if/then sentence with a subordinate clause. These are conjugated with the conditional in the "if" phrase and the subjunctive in the "then" phrase, like this (from the accepted answer):
but you ask "why the second que?" This is a relative pronoun (according to the accepted answer), which is just any personal pronoun that introduces a relative phrase. (There are different ways of classifying grammar. According to some sources it is a demonstrative pronoun. In any case, it is a general linguistic thing called a "determiner".)
an example in english with a relative phrase:
The object the cyclist is an object of the verb of both phrases. You could imagine spelling it out: "The cyclist who won the race, he trained hard."
The relative pronoun passes that object to the subordinate phrase. So really, this example is kinda like an if/then phrase with the order reversed.
Let's reshape this into the same form as the spanish:
that won the race.You'll notice that, compared to where this started, we now have an extra verb. Just as in the spanish sentence.
Notice the "that" immediately after "it" in the same phrase? Why is the second pronoun "that" needed?
The same reason as it is in spanish.
Without "technical" complexity
'I would develop a system that would make kids want to learn',
What is what would do? I would develop a system = Desarrollaría un sistema
What is will this system would make?
kids want to learn = que los niños quieran aprender
Then add the relation (would make)
Desarrollaría un sistema que haga que los niños quieran aprender
Another way to say the same thing could be
Desarrollaría un sistema que haga a los niños desear aprender.
This form is correct but is not common to speak like this. It sounds like a bad translation.
