Second Conditional or Unreal Present
Second Conditional or Unreal Present
Hey you guys! What’s up?
Today we are learning how we can talk about hypothetical situations in English!
Baixe essa aula em PDF: Lesson #06 – Second Conditional
We need to know the structure of the 2nd conditional, also known as UNREAL PRESENT. It is unreal because it is a hypothesis!
In the example If I had a lot of money, I would travel around the world, the first sentence is an unreal condition, because I don’t have a lot of money. But the hypothetical consequence of that condition is that I would be able to travel around the world!
In that case, the structure we have for this function is as follows:
If + simple past ____, would/could
We ALWAYS use the simple past in the IF sentence and the WOULD or COULD modal in the other sentence.
Take a look at this example taken from Beyoncé’s song:
IF I WERE A BOY, I THINK I COULD UNDERSTAND.
The IF sentence is in the Simple Past and the other one is using COULD. It is important to note that the sentence goes IF I WERE, instead of if I was. This is the standard grammar rule, and it happens in some structures. This doesn’t mean that it is wrong to say If I was, it’s just not formal or standardized.
Tá, e agora?
You know what to do! If you practiced more, you would see how easy this is!
