How To Use Conditionals

If there was nothing wrong in the world, there wouldn’t be anything for us to do. George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright

As we said, things seem pretty 1. __: If you pay in advance, we will give you a discount. The 2._ is that when having in mind the Croatian sentence: Ako budete kasnili s plaćanjem, obračunat ćemo vam zatezne kamate, we are very often 3._ to say: If you will be late with repayment… The correct English requires the following: If you ARE late with repayment, we will charge you a default interest. We use present although we are 4._ to future. With this sentence you are also unintentionally and maybe without being 5._ of it, expressing your pessimism about the client’s creditworthiness. In other words, you are implying that it is 6._ and possible that the client will be late with repayment.

Your optimism would be reflected in the sentence: If you were late with repayment, we would charge you a default interest. In that case you would refer to the future situation as 7._ and only imaginary. (You think that the client probably WON’T be late with repayment). The problem for non-native speakers is that we are 8._ to translate sentences of that kind for what they appear to be: If I had enough money, I would buy shares. Be careful. This does not mean Da sam imala dovoljno novaca, kupila bih dionice. It simply says Kad bih imala/da imam dovoljno novaca, kupila bih dionice. (Now or in the future). So, past tense does not refer to past time but rather to a present (or future) situation which is unreal and imaginary. I don’t have enough money but I can imagine what it would be like to have it. So in the sentence ‘If I were Barack Obama, I would …’ it used for 9.____.

But if the sentence: If I had enough free time… refers to present or future, how do we 10._ about past then? We should use something that looks rather complicated (but is the only grammatically correct solution): If I had had more free time, I would have played tennis with you. This sentence means: I didn’t have enough free time so I didn’t play tennis with you. (And now I can only 11._ the lost 12.____.)

| 1st conditional | main clause | example ||—————–|————-|———|| PRESENT SIMPLE | WILL + infinitive | If we move to the States, we will not visit you so often. || | likely and probable future situation (I was offered a job and we will probably move) || 2nd conditional | main clause | example ||—————–|————-|———|| PAST SIMPLE | WOULD + infinitive | If we moved to the States, we would not visit you so often. || | unlikely or imaginary present or future (we will not move to the States) || 3rd conditional | main clause | example ||—————–|————-|———|| PAST PERFECT (had + past participle) | WOULD + HAVE + past participle | If we hadn’t moved to the States, we wouldn’t have visited you so often. || | speculating about the past (we did not move to the States so we visited you often) |

Exercise 1 Make conditional sentences about the following situations:

1. I think I can go home early today and work on my presentation. If I _ (prepare) the presentation on time, we _ (go) out in the evening.

2. It seems you don’t see the situation as I do. If you _ (be) realistic, you _ (not/ insist) on going to London next week.

3. Last week I had to go on a business trip but if I _ (stay) in Zagreb, I _ (have) more time for my family.

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