Have you ever thought of how many times you use the conditional in a day?

How many times have you said to yourself or to someone else things like this?

1. Se eu for à festa, eu vou levar uma garrafa de vinho.
(If I go to the party, I’m going to take a bottle of wine.)

2. Se eu falar com ele, eu vou poder explicar porquê me atrasei.
(If I speak with him, I’m going be able to explain why I was late.)

3. Se eu ganhar a lotaria, eu vou ajudar mais a minha família.
(If I win the lottery, I'm going to help my family more.)

4. Eles ficariam tristes se eu não fosse a casa deles.
(They would be disappointed if I didn’t go to their house.)

5. Se eu tivesse o email dela, eu poderia comunicar com ela.
(If I had her email, I would be able to communicate with her.)

6. Se ele tivesse mentido, eu nunca mais falaria com ele.
(If he had lied to me, I would never speak to him again.)

7. Se eu soubesse que você queria ir ao cinema, eu teria ido também.
(If I had known you wanted to go to the movies, I would have gone too.)

Please, don’t forget that if you would like to master this and other areas of your Portuguese, you should get your hands on The Language Lover’s Guide To Learning Portuguese here

And if you would like to have some personal language training, please contact me through this form here.

Indeed, today we are going to learn something POWERFUL and interesting because it will make a huge difference when you speak Portuguese with your friends and members of your family.

Yes, that’s right, today we will talk about “the conditional”.

You might find it useful to download this free verb table with the Subjunctive Mood in Portuguese here.

Print it out and laminate it for constant use.

The reason why many people may find the Conditional difficult to use lies in the fact that they might not really understand how to use it nor do they know how flexible it can be.

Let me confess something to you:

In my personal experience, I used to find the concept difficult too, but when I started to understand both my own and other languages, it became a piece of cake once I understood the concept.

And I realized that I could use it in many other languages as well. How cool is that?!

When you speak in your own language, you probably take it for granted, but when you learn another language you know you need to understand what you intuitively say.

It’s a fact that if you don’t understand something, you can’t expect to use it correctly. Knowledge is something you pursue, analyse, understand and acquire. Knowledge won’t be given to you on a silver platter. You need to put some effort in it in order to get the big reward, don’t you agree?

Anyway...

Most of the time you use the Portuguese word “SE” (in English “IF”), you are very likely using the conditional.

In order for you to use the conditional, you need to be aware of a few things:

1. The situation the condition depends on,
2. Some verb tenses,
3. Your expectations about the situation.

OK, let me explain:

Every condition requires a previous situation upon which it depends. Let’s check out the first sentence I gave you above:

1 . “Se eu decidir ir à festa, eu vou levar uma garrafa de vinho.”
(If I decide to go to the party, I’m going to take a bottle of wine.)

This means that, although the situation is not a fact, you feel that there is a real possibility that you’re going to the party. There is a positive feeling telling you that you are likely to go, and if this happens, you’re going to take a bottle with you.

So, when you are expressing a condition like this, you can apply the following formula:

Se + Future Subjunctive => Present or Future Indicative.

In other words,

Se eu decidir... -> (Se + Future Subjunctive tense of the verb)

...eu vou levar... -> (Future Indicative tense of the verb)

As we have seen on other occasions, in Portuguese you can often use the Present Indicative of a verb with a Future meaning, so here it’s up to you if you'd rather use the present (...eu levo uma garrafa de vinho) or the future forms (...eu vou levar uma garrafa de vinho. (I’m going to take) / ...eu levarei uma garrafa de vinho. (I will take) ). The result is pretty much the same.

Got it?

Good!

Now, let’s have a look at the second sentence:

2. “Se eu falar com ele, eu vou poder explicar porquê me atrasei.”
(If I speak with him, I ‘m going to be able to explain why I was late.)

As you can see, here you are saying that you will definitely explain why you were late, BUT WITH THE CONDITION that you speak with him about it.

Now, let’s look at the third sentence to see if these rules also apply:

3. “Se eu ganhar a lotaria, eu vou ajudar mais a minha família.”
(If I win the lottery, I’m going to help my family more.)

When you say this, you are saying that the condition for you to help your family more is winning the lottery. So, the second part of the sentence (your helping your family) depends on the first part (your winning the lottery); in other words, the second part of the sentence will only happen if the condition of the first part is met, and you are positive that one day you’ll win the lottery.

Does this make sense to you?

I hope it does!

So, as you see once again, the condition is somewhat speculative – it’s a possibility – and it’s not a fact.

And this is why you need the SUBJUNCTIVE mood. The Subjunctive mood is mostly used when you need to talk about non-real situations and non-factual scenarios.

But, let’s stop here for a moment:

If you stop and think about what you say when you use the conditional (well, I’m using it here right now in this sentence), you’ll realise that a condition can be either a likely possibility or an unlikely possibility.

The three first sentences are likely possibilities because chances are that somehow you will accomplish your intentions or your desire to accomplish them.

In the likelihood that you expect to experience the situation you are referring to, but if you think that it’s quite unlikely it will happen, you’d say things in another way. Let me challenge you for a minute:

What do you think the difference is between these two sentences?

A) “Se eu ganhar a lotaria, eu vou ajudar mais a minha família.”
(If I win the lottery, I’m going to help my family more.)

and

B) “Se eu ganhasse a lotaria, eu ajudaria mais a minha família.”
(If I won the lottery, I would help my family more.)

Can you figure it out?

Exactly!

The former sentence expresses a positive condition – you hope to win the lottery one day so that you can help your family – whereas the latter expresses a more unenthusiastic condition – you’d like to win it but you know that the odds are not in your favour, so you say it in a more doubtful way.

You see? You can also express the conditional that reflects a situation that might or might not happen!

OK. So far, so good?

Good!

Let’s keep going.

The 4th and 5th following sentences are also interesting for you to analyse the conditional.

Let’s check them out together...

4. “Eles ficariam tristes se eu não fosse a casa deles.”
(They would be disappointed if I didn’t go to their house.)

What you are saying here is that you THINK they will be disappointed, but it’s not certain that they will be. They might not even notice you are not there (in their house), in case they have invited a hundred people, for instance. They might never notice you are missing! So, the condition you are referring to might never happen!

What you are also expressing here is no more than A SPECULATION that is happening just in your head, but you are picturing the scenario as a remote condition that if you don’t go, they will be disappointed – which is not necessarily true.

Can you see the subtlety here?

So, because you are just uttering a non-factual situation, here again, you need to use the Subjunctive mood after “SE” (IF), but in this case, because you want to express that a more doubtful idea, you need to use the Subjunctive past (also known as Imperfect Subjunctive) and this second condition also requires a special verb ending:

SE + Subjunctive Past => Conditional mood

As you might have noticed, the condition requires two parts of a sentence, which you can switch if you like. This last sentence shows you exactly that switch:

Conditional mood => SE + Subjunctive Past

“Eles ficariam tristes...” -> (Conditional mood)
(“They would be disappointed...”)

“...se eu não fosse a casa deles.” -> (Se + Subjunctive Past)
(“...if I didn’t go to their house.”)

And what about the next sentence?

5. "Se eu tivesse o email dela, eu poderia comunicar com ela".
(If I had her email, I would be able to communicate with her.)

Here, once again you are speculating. What you are saying may never happen because what is for sure is that YOU don’t have her email, and the chances that you will get it are very slim if you do nothing to get it.

The fact is that you DON’T have her email address, but in your head you FANTASIZE as if you did.

This is absolutely wonderful, isn’t it?

When we analyse both what we say and how we say it, we often amaze ourselves!

Wow! Just imagine where language can take you, my friend!

But that’s not all!

There is more to it than that! Please read on to check it out:

You can also go further into the speculation and say things that could have occurred in the past, which in fact didn’t.

A semana passada a Maria e o Pedro falavam sobre os seus namorados.
(Last week Maria and Pedro were talking about their boyfriends.)

A Maria dizia ao Pedro que o namorado dela mentiu sobre uma conversa que ele teve com uma ex-namorada.
(Maria was telling Pedro that her boyfriend lied about a conversation he had had with an ex-girlfriend of his.)

O Pedro para consolar a Maria diz:
(Pedro, to console Maria says: )

6. “Se ele me tivesse mentido, eu nunca mais falaria com ele.”
(“If he had lied to me, I would never speak to him again.”)

Wow! That’s rather drastic! But that’s not the point here.

The point here is that this condition expresses something very interesting.

This condition expresses that the situation occurred in the past and you WISH you could have changed that behaviour in the past!

Maria’s problem was not Pedro’s problem; but he was telling her what he would have done in a similar situation.

Can you see how crazy this can be?

This kind of condition is a total illusion (in terms of practical life solutions); nevertheless, it is so often observed in our day-to-day conversations!

Every time you want to use this conditional, you need the Pluperfect Subjunctive - a “compound tense” - which is a tense that uses more than one verb – an auxiliary verb “TER” (to have) plus the main verb Past Participle.

So, the formula is:

Se + Pluperfect Subjunctive => Conditional

“Se ele me tivesse mentido...” -> Se + Pluperfect Subjunctive
(“If he had lied to me...”)

“...eu nunca mais falaria com ele.” -> Conditional mood
(“I would never speak to him again.”)

As you can see, here the pluperfect subjunctive is made out of:

1. the Subjunctive past of the auxiliary verb “Ter” (to have) – “tivesse”

2. the Past Participle of the main verb “mentir” (to lie) “mentido”

Result: “tivesse mentido”.

Now, imagine another situation:

A Maria diz ao Pedro que um dia do mês passado, queria ir ao cinema mas como não tinha companhia, decidiu ficar em casa.
(Maria says to Pedro that one day last month she wanted to go to the movies, but since she didn’t have someone to go with her, she decided to stay home.)

O Pedro lamenta e diz:
(Pedro is sorry to hear that and says: )

7. “Se eu soubesse que você queria ir ao cinema, eu teria ido também.
(“If I had known you wanted to go to the movies, I would have gone too.”)

You see? Here they are talking about something that was completed in the past but are expressing their desire that they could have changed something in the past.

Indeed, this last condition makes you feel like you want to travel back in time, so imagine... se fosse possível... (...if it were possible...)

Got it? This is not a big deal after all, right?

So, after reading this newsletter, please be aware of situations where you can apply these rules. Record them or write them down and later convert them into Portuguese phrases.

Falamos outra vez em breve! (We’ll speak again soon!)

Deste amigo,
Your friend,

Rafa x

PS 1: Questions about any topics? Success stories? Please let me know.

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:-)

Tchau!