Lesson 21: Introducing the Conditional Tense

The conditional is used to describe what someone would do or what would happen under certain circumstances, as in Je ne le ferais pas, "I wouldn’t do it." It can also make requests sound more polite and describe an event that was still in the future from a past point of view.

Here are the endings for regular verbs in the conditional. Like the future tense, all verbs use the same endings:

The conditional combines two patterns you already know:

Use the same exact stem as the simple future, then add ‑ais, ‑ais, ‑ait, ‑ions, ‑iez, or ‑aient:

• parler- + -ais → je parlerais
• vendr- + -ions → nous vendrions
• viendr- + -ait → il viendrait

Here are our three regular verbs fully conjugated in the conditional:

The conditional has three common uses: describing what would happen, making polite requests, and referring to an event that was still in the future from a past point of view.

Describing What Would Happen

The conditional often appears in a sentence with two parts: an imagined condition introduced by si, and the result that would follow.

Do not use the conditional directly after si. Use the imparfait after si to state the condition, and use the conditional in the other part of the sentence to describe the result.

Here, si vous trouviez la dernière pièce states the imagined condition, while vous finiriez le puzzle describes what would happen if that condition were met.

Making Polite Requests

Using the conditional makes the request sound more polite and less direct.

Describing the Future from the Past

At the time of the announcement, the rain had not happened yet—it was still in the future.