the Spanish conditional

when to use it

Use it for wishes, hypotheticals and polite requests. At GCSE it is most often carried by one phrase, me gustaría, which fits into almost any answer about the future, a job, a holiday or a hobby and puts a whole extra tense into it.

Words that tend to sit with it: me gustaría, si fuera rico..., en tu lugar...

• me gustaría viajar por el mundo ~ I would like to travel the world
• sería fantástico ~ it would be fantastic

how to build it

Same trick as the future - add the ending to the WHOLE infinitive (hablar + ía = hablaría).

one verb from each group

The three regular patterns side by side, so the only thing changing between columns is the group the verb belongs to.

what goes wrong

Building it off a stem instead of the infinitive. Hablar plus ía is hablaría; habl plus ía is hablía, which is not a word.

Exactly the same shortened stems as the future, with the -ía endings on them: tendría, podría, haría, saldría, diría. If you learnt them for the future, there is nothing new here.

common questions

how do you form the conditional in Spanish?

Add -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían to the whole infinitive. They are the same endings as the imperfect of -er and -ir verbs, and they are the same for every verb group, so hablar gives hablaría and vivir gives viviría.

which verbs are irregular in the Spanish conditional?

Exactly the same ones as the future, using exactly the same stems: tendría, podría, haría, diría, saldría, pondría, vendría, querría, sabría, habría. If you have learnt them for the future you already know the conditional.