Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to conjugate regular verbs in the conditional tense and use it to express hypothetical actions.

Lesson Explanation

The conditional tense expresses “would” — what someone would do under certain circumstances. Genuinely convenient: it uses the entire infinitive as its stem (no dropping the -ar/-er/-ir), with one single set of endings shared across all three verb groups:

hablaría, hablarías, hablaría, hablaríamos, hablaríais, hablarían comería, comerías, comería, comeríamos, comeríais, comerían viviría, vivirías, viviría, viviríamos, viviríais, vivirían

Notice these endings (-ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían) are identical to the -er/-ir imperfect endings from Part 4, Lesson 3 — only the stem differs (the full infinitive here, versus a shortened stem there).

The same small set of verbs with irregular stems in the future tense (next lesson) also share those irregular stems here: tener → tendr- → tendría (would have); hacer → har- → haría (would do); poder → podr- → podría (would be able to).

Examples: Me gustaría viajar a España. (I would like to travel to Spain.), ¿Podrías ayudarme? (Could/Would you be able to help me?) — this last example shows the conditional’s genuinely common use for polite requests, softer than the present tense.

Practice Questions