Regular Verbs in Spanish: the Conditional

As we’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, what makes Spanish such a difficult language to learn for English speakers is not the vocabulary or pronunciation, but rather the grammar, and in particular, the verbs. Conjugating verbs in Spanish can be an absolute nightmare for Americans, as the English language typically has only one or two conjugations for any verb in any tense. As seen in a previous post, the future tense in Spanish in perhaps the easiest to conjugate of the lot. Today, however, we’ll see that the conditional tense in Spanish is just as straightforward.

 

The conditional regular endings

Just as in the future tense, the conditional has the same endings for all three types of verbs: -ar, -er, -ir. This is definitely a well-deserved break from the present simple and past simple tenses in Spanish. Let’s see what they are:

-ar	-er	-ir
ía	ía	ía
ías	ías	ías
ía	ía	ía
íamos	íamos	íamos
íais	íais	íais
ían	ían	ían

 

In order to form the conditional, however, remember that the infinitive verb ending is not dropped like most other verb tenses. Instead, the conditional ending is added directly onto the infinitive.  We’ll have a look at some examples:

	amar	conocer	ir
yo	amaría	conocería	iría
tú	amarías	conocerías	irías
él/ella/usted	amaría	conocería	iría
nosotros	amaríamos	conoceríamos	iríamos
vosotros	amaríais	conoceríais	iríais
ellos/ellas	amarían	conocerían	irían

 

Conditional irregular forms

In addition to using the same endings for all verbs — and not even having to remove the infinitive ending — there are very few irregular forms in the conditional tense. What’s more, as seen in the table above, many verbs that are typically irregular are often regular in the future and conditional tenses — a welcomed change. An irregular verb in the conditional, such as salir, would not be saliría, but rather, saldría. Let’s take a look at some more examples:

	valer	poder	salir
yo	valdría	podría	saldría
tú	valdrías	podrías	saldrías
él/ella/usted	valdría	podría	saldría
nosotros	valdríamos	podríamos	saldríamos
vosotros	valdríais	podríais	saldríais
ellos/ellas	valdrían	podrían	saldrían

 

The complete list of irregulars is the same in both the future and conditional tenses, which is the following:

caber	cabr-
decir	dir-
haber	habr-
hacer	har-
poder	podr-
poner	pondr-
querer	querr-
saber	sabr-
salir	saldr-
tener	tendr-
valer	valdr-
venir	vendr-

 

What would you say?

So what would you say if all of the tenses in Spanish were this simple? Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, but it’s certainly a nice thought. After mastering the present and past tenses, however, all the others will definitely seem easy!