A Sense of English

A SENSE OF ENGLISH

“If you would…” If I had a pound for every time I have heard this grammar mistake, I would be a very rich man. “If you would…” is a classic error that students of many nationalities are prone to making.

Sentences that start with an ‘if’ clause are known as Conditionals - like my “If I had a pound…” sentence above. They are vitally important in English as they are used so often. It is estimated that native speakers use an average of about 35 Conditional sentences A DAY in their everyday speaking.

There are three main types of Conditional sentence, each of which follow a particular grammatical structure. They are referred to as the First, Second and Third Conditionals, and all of them have two clauses (or parts) to the sentence.

It is highly advisable to study them together as a self-contained subject within English grammar. If not, they can be a cause of confusion. For example, did you understand exactly what my sentence at the beginning of this article means? Let’s have a look together:

“If I had a pound for every time I have heard this grammar mistake, I would be a very rich man.”

Firstly, notice the two clauses in the sentence, separated by the comma. This sentence is an example of the Second Conditional, and the key concept to understand is that it is used to talk about something imaginary.

The tense used in the ‘if’ clause is the past simple (“if I had…”). However the meaning is not past. But you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t studied the Second Conditional as a particular sentence type with a specific use and meaning.

The sentence imagines something; it is not real. In other words, I don’t have a pound for every time I have heard that mistake. Whenever ‘if’ is followed by the past simple, something imaginary is being expressed.

Let’s demonstrate the point with another couple of examples of the Second Conditional:

If I had time, I would learn French. (The speaker is telling us that in reality he doesn’t have time.)

If John didn’t smoke, he would probably still be able to run the marathon. (The speaker is telling us that John still smokes).

The explanations given in brackets tell us that – through the use of ‘if + past simple’ - the speaker is imagining something that is not real at the time of speaking. The reality is the opposite of what the past tense expresses. That’s what the Second Conditional is all about.

Conditional sentences need lots of time and practice to master. For all serious students of English, however, it is essential to be fully competent at using them. Simply put: You cannot communicate effectively without them.

There are two aspects to mastering them. Firstly, you must clearly understand the ideas that they convey, and how those ideas relate to either a real or imaginary situation in the past, present or future.

Secondly, you need to know the grammatical structures of the three types of Conditional, and the many variations that are possible. This is easy enough in written English, when you have time to think, but that’s not a luxury that you have when speaking.

So, what’s wrong with “if you would…”? Would and the other modal verbs can (and indeed are) used very often in Conditional sentences, but never in the ‘if’ clause. They are used in the other part of the sentence. There is one very rare exception to this, but that’s for another time..