In Spanish, the conditional mood is primarily used to express what would happen if circumstances were different, much like in English. The key difference is that in Spanish, we conjugate a single verb, whereas in English, we use would plus the base form of the verb. In this post, we’ll focus specifically on the tense called the simple conditional. Examples:
Yo iría pero no tengo tiempo.
I would go but I don’t have time.
Ella viajaría a España si tuviera dinero.
She would travel to Spain if I had money.
We can also use the conditional with a few verbs to show politeness:
¿Podrías ayudarme?
Could you help me?
¿Te gustaría ir al cine conmigo, Juana?
Would you like to go to the movies with me, Juana?
Or to express a wish:
Me gustaría ir a Méjico.
I would like to go to Mexico.
There are more uses, but we’ll see that later.
As you can tell, we mostly use it the same way in English and Spanish. Of course, there are a few exceptions, but let’s not sweat the small stuff for now.
CONJUGATION
To form the simple conditional, you just need to add the personal endings to the whole infinitive. Interestingly, the endings are exactly the same as those used for the imperfect past in er and ir verbs.
Let’s check out how it works with the verb hablar. I’ve got Gael, a voice from Spain, to read it out loud for you. The endings are the same for ar, er and ir verbs:
| PERSON | CONJUGATION |
|---|---|
| yo | hablaría |
| tú | hablarías |
| usted | hablaría |
| él ella | hablaría |
| nosotros nosotras | hablaríamos |
| ustedes | hablarían |
| ellos ellas | hablarían |
| vos | hablarías |
| vosotros vosotras | hablaríais |
And now, let’s play this game. Just click Start!
A post with irregular verbs, like poder, will come soon!
