Me gustaría visitar Barcelona: the condicional simple tense
With this article, we begin a series of articles in which I'm going to break the order in which Spanish as a foreign language courses or textbooks are generally organized and in which, additionally, I'm going to explain topics and propose exercises of different levels. I am, at this moment, beginning to write this series of articles and I'm structuring it in my mind, so I don't know if this experiment will turn out well or badly, but I have my reasons. In this article we'll see the simple conditional of the indicative mood in Spanish, then we'll see something about the subjunctive mood, a topic that is definitely a headache for those learning the language, and I know this from experience because I myself am "suffering" through it in French, and then we'll look at the conditional and subjunctive together and learn the structure of conditional sentences. It's because of this last point that I want to jump levels, or rather go back and forth between different levels: while I understand that the idea I have right now may not be very orthodox from a didactic point of view and that surely some of the articles in this series may be difficult to understand, and therefore the exercises derived from this series complex to complete, the conditional and the subjunctive are used very often together in the Spanish language. And not only in literature, but in spoken language, in everyday life. And they are also a source of frequent errors among native speakers of the language that I believe it's important to identify because those who make them speak that way, and identifying that way of speaking will help you understand it. So, we begin the experiment. It's going to be very interesting for me to write this series of articles, I hope it will be interesting to read it as well. Let's go!
The condicional simple: basic uses.
The simple conditional, as its name says, generally implies that a condition must be met for a certain verbal action to be true, to be able to be true, or to have been true. The simple conditional is used, for example, to express a theoretical possibility, surely its most intuitive use:
El café estaría más rico con azúcar (The coffee would be tastier with sugar). But it doesn’t have sugar.
Yo viviría muy bien en ese lugar (I would live very well in that place). But I don’t live in that place.
It’s also used, with verbs like gustar, preferir, etc., to express wishes:
Me gustaría ser escritor (I would like to be a writer). But I’m not.
Preferiría quedarme en casa hoy (I would prefer to stay home today). It’s what I want to do.
The verb querer can be used in the conditional to express wishes, but in much of the Spanish-speaking world, the imperfect subjunctive is used instead of the conditional. Yo querría visitar Austria (I would like to visit Austria) is grammatically correct and, formally, what should be said or written according to the grammar of the language. However, what you’re going to hear most is yo quisiera visitar Austria. The form yo querría visitar Austria, using the conditional, sounds formal, or even literary.
The conditional is also used to give advice:
Deberías estudiar más para el examen (You should study more for the exam).
Yo no comería eso si fuera tú (I wouldn’t eat that if I were you).
It’s also used to express probability or supposition in the past:
Yo tendría 35 años cuando viajé a Francia (I was maybe 35 years old when I traveled to France). I don’t remember my exact age at that time.
El hombre habría salido de la casa incendiada antes de la llegada de los bomberos (“The man would have left the burning house before the firefighters arrived”). This is a supposition. This use is more literary or journalistic. In spoken language other resources would normally be used: parece que el hombre salió de la casa antes de que lleguen los bomberos (it seems the man left the house before the firefighters arrived), dicen que el hombre salió de la casa antes de que lleguen los bomberos (they say the man left the house before the firefighters arrived), etc.
The simple conditional is also used to make requests politely:
¿Podríamos encender el aire acondicionado? (Could we turn on the air conditioning?).
¿Serías tan amable de ayudarme con esto? (Would you be so kind as to help me with this?).
¿Me harías un favor? (Would you do me a favor?).
I have written in many articles on this blog that forms of courtesy are not used as much in Spanish as in other languages, because of the fact that courtesy maintains distance and Spanish is a language of closeness. This form of making polite requests is, however, colloquially used.
While this verb tense has more uses, this is simply the first approach to the simple conditional, so we’ll see it again in other articles in this series.
Regular Conjugation: To form the simple conditional, the same endings are taken for all three verb groups (-ar, -er, -ir) and added to the infinitive:
-ía (yo) -ías (tú)
-ía (él/ella/usted)
-íamos (nosotros/nosotras)
-íais (vosotros/vosotras)
-ían (ellos/ellas/ustedes)
Hablar:
Yo hablaría
Tú hablarías
Él/ella/usted hablaría
Nosotros/nosotras hablaríamos
Vosotros/vosotras hablaríais
Ellos/ellas/ustedes hablarían
Comer:
Yo comería
Tú comerías
Él/ella/usted comería
Nosotros/nosotras comeríamos
Vosotros/vosotras comeríais
Ellos/ellas/ustedes comerían
Vivir:
Yo viviría
Tú vivirías
Él/ella/usted viviría
Nosotros/nosotras viviríamos
Vosotros/vosotras viviríais
Ellos/ellas/ustedes vivirían
Irregular Conjugation: The verbs that are irregular in the conditional are the same ones that are irregular in the simple future. They change the verb stem, but maintain the same endings as regular verbs.
Main irregular verbs:
Group 1: Loss of vowel.
CABER → cabr- (yo cabría, tú cabrías…)
HABER → habr- (yo habría, tú habrías…)
PODER → podr- (yo podría, tú podrías…)
QUERER → querr- (yo querría, tú querrías…)
SABER → sabr- (yo sabría, tú sabrías…)
Group 2: Change of vowel to ‘d’.
PONER → pondr- (yo pondría, tú pondrías…)
SALIR → saldr- (yo saldría, tú saldrías…)
TENER → tendr- (yo tendría, tú tendrías…)
VALER → valdr- (yo valdría, tú valdrías…)
VENIR → vendr- (yo vendría, tú vendrías…)
Group 3: Completely irregular verbs.
DECIR → dir- (yo diría, tú dirías…)
HACER → har- (yo haría, tú harías…)
Example of complete irregular conjugation with PODER:
Yo podría estudiar más (I could study more).
Tú podrías ayudarme (You could help me).
Él podría llegar tarde (He could arrive late).
Nosotros podríamos ir juntos (We could go together).
Vosotras podríais participar (You all could participate).
Ellas podrían ganar el concurso (They could win the contest).
We have reached the end of this first article in this series. I hope these lines have been useful to you. Here I leave you exercises to practice this topic and, as always, thank you for reading.
Leave a Reply