A SENSE OF ENGLISH

A SENSE OF ENGLISH
THE THIRD CONDITIONAL

“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail, I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” Most of us know the experience that this sentence is referring to, but would you have been able to correctly construct the sentence in English?

This is an example of the Third Conditional, and seemingly it’s being used here to express regret. There is some good news and some bad news about the Third Conditional – let’s start with the latter and then cheer ourselves up!

Third Conditional sentences are difficult to form, as the tenses used (the Past Perfect and the Conditional Perfect) both involve the use of the auxiliary verb “to have”. This means that the sentences are quite long. Sounding natural when speaking also involves mastering the contractions (e.g. “had not” to “hadn’t”, “would have” to “would’ve”, etc).

There is also the added complication that “would” can be replaced by other modal verbs to create a nuance of meaning. This happens in all the different Conditional sentences. That’s why I believe it’s extremely useful to study Conditionals and modal verbs together.

At first, it’s enough to think about getting the structure right. My view is that it’s better to focus on that first, and become very familiar with the tenses that you need for the Third Conditional. Then you can think about adding the fluency.

As a student of other languages myself, I am aware of a tendency that we have to try and speak too quickly, especially when we are surrounded by that language in our every day life. We want to imitate what we hear. But trying to run before we can walk disturbs our later learning patterns. Trying to sound too fluent too soon usually results in mistakes becoming habits.

When habits become very engrained, they are hard to undo. Why not train yourself to be patient from the outset, and get things right bit by bit?

In last month’s article I highlighted the typical “If I/you would…” mistake. Lots of students put “would” in the ‘if clause’ of a Conditional sentence out of habit. That is only correct in a couple of quite rare contexts, yet many students continuously make the mistake and struggle to correct it. Make sure the habits you form in learning English are beneficial ones.

The Third Conditional then, is hard to form because of its complicated structure and extensive use of contractions and modal verbs. The good news, though, is that it is easy to understand when it should be used.

It always relates to a past action/event that had a result. Look back at our example sentence in paragraph 1. Something happened last night (I had that last cocktail on top of all the other alcohol I had drunk) and – because of that - there was a result (I had a terrible headache when I woke up this morning).

Can you see what our Third Conditional sentence does? It imagines the opposite of what really happened, i.e. the opposite action and the opposite result.

“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail…” this is telling us that the reality was I DID have a cocktail as my final drink, and….”I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” is telling us that the reality was I DID wake up with a headache.

It sounds like the speaker is expressing regret! But without a full context we can’t be sure. Can you think of another emotion that is often expressed through the use of the Third Conditional?Give that some thought.

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..