Present Conditional

The English Language is full of different verb forms in order to express several circumstances. One of them is a verb and tense form called the "present conditional". The present conditional is divided into two important forms with different uses.

PRESENT REAL CONDITIONAL
The Present Real Conditional is used in order to talk about what you normally do in real-life situations. Building the form is not that difficult, in your first sentence you only take one of the words "If" and "When" at the beginning of your sentence and then you go on with the Simple Present. The second sentence starts with the Simple Present.
You can also do it the other way around.

EXAMPLES
1. If I visit my boyfriend, I usually wear my most beautiful dress.
2. When I have a lot of free time, I often drive with my car and listen to music.
3. My father helps me with my homework when he has time.
4. I often call my best friends when I have trouble at home.

PRESENT UNREAL CONDITIONAL
The Present Unreal Conditional is used in order to talk about what you would normally do in unreal situations. Building the form is as simple as building the Present Real Conditional. In your first sentence you start with the word "If" and the Simple Past.
The second sentence contains "would + infinitive". Even here you can do it the other way around.

EXAMPLES
1. If I owned a house in France, I would stay there all summer.
2. If my boyfriend went away, I would be really sad.
3. I would move to Berlin, if I didn't have school.
4. I would visit my friend in Spain, if I had enough money.

If you compare the two forms of the Present Conditional, you can see that the use of the Present Real Conditional makes a difference between "If" and "When". It is important to know that both words have got an individual meaning. Using "If" suggests that something happens less frequently. Using "When" suggests that something happens regularly.

EXAMPLES
1. When I have holidays, I normally travel to Italy. (<--I regularly have holidays)
2. If I have holidays, I normally travel to Italy. (<--I rarely have holidays)

By using the Present Unreal Conditional, you also have to consider some rules if you want to build correct sentences. At first, it is important to know that you can only use "If", but not the word "When".

EXAMPLES
1. I would visit my friend in Spain when I have enough money. (<-- not correct)
2. I would visit my friend in Spain if I had enough money. (<--correct)

The second thing you have to consider is that the use of the form "was" is not seen as grammatically correct. Especially in written English it is better to use the word "were" instead of "was".

EXAMPLES
1. If he were my boyfriend, he would wear other clothes.
1. If I were in Spain, I would concentrate on learning the language.


A thing that you have to consider in general is that the modal verbs you know (can, shall, may) cannot be used with "would". There are special forms which have to be used.

EXAMPLES
1. would + can = could
2. would + shall = should
3. would + may = might


All in all you can see that is it not difficult to use the Present Conditional. You always have to think about the content of the circumstances you want to talk about and then consider to use the correct words and word order.

The synonym alphabet

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