12.6: El tiempo condicional
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Objetivos
- Recognize and understand the conditional tense
The conditional tense in Spanish, like the future tense, adds the endings right onto the verb’s full infinitive. The endings are actually the same as the -ER/-IR verb endings for the imperfect past tense: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. And the irregular forms in the conditional tense are the same as the irregular forms that you learned for the future tense.
Conjugation of the regular conditional tense
Irregular conditional: vowel > d
Irregular conditional: “e” disappears
| haber | caber | querer |
| habría | cabría | querría |
| habría | cabrías | querrías |
| habría | cabría | querría |
| habríamos | cabríamos | querríamos |
| habríais | cabríais | querríais |
| habrían | cabrían | querrían |
Irregular conditional: “c” disappears
| decir | hacer |
| diría | haría |
| dirías | harías |
| diría | haría |
| diríamos | haríamos |
| diríais | haríais |
| dirían | harían |
The conditional tense is translated to English as “would” and is used to express hypothetical actions. For now, be sure to just use it in simple one-verb sentences (e.g. “In that case, I would say yes”), because when the conditional is used in complex hypothetical sentences (e.g. “If you asked me, I would say yes”) the conditional pairs with a verb tense that we haven’t learned yet.
- ¿Qué súperpoder querrías tener? ( What superpower would you want to have? )
- Yo sacaría toda la basura y contaminación de los océanos. ( I would remove all the garbage and pollution from the oceans.)
- Con suficiente voluntad y disciplina podríamos cambiar muchos de nuestros malos hábitos y mejorar el medio ambiente. ( With enough determination and discipline we would be able to change a lot of our bad habits and improve the environment. )
¡OJO! Not all uses of “would” are the same:
Habitual past action: translate with imperfect past tense.
- Cuando éramos jóvenes tirábamos a la basura los platos y utensilios de plástico después de usarlos una sola vez. ( When we were younger we would throw out plastic plates and utensils after using them just once. )
Hypothetical or contrary-to-fact action: translate with conditional tense.
Conditional of probability
Remember that the future tense can be used to speculate about circumstances in the present? Similarly, the conditional can be used to speculate about circumstances in the past.
- Las personas que inventaron el motor de combustión interna, ¿ entenderían las consecuencias ambientales de su invención? ( Do you think the people who invented the internal combustion engine understood the environmental consequences of their invention ?)
- Las generaciones anteriores pensarían que el mundo era suficientemente grande como para absorber todas las emisiones. ( Previous generations probably thought that the world was big enough to absorb all the emissions .)