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Hello English learners. Welcome back to another great lesson here at EnglishPod. My name is Marco

and my name is Catherine.

So Marco, today we’ve got a little bit unusual lesson because we’re talking about hypothetical situations.

Right, we’re talking about an unreal situation or something that may happen or may not happen.

Okay, so you’re gonna hear all about this in today’s dialogue. We’re gonna hear it a couple of times, when we come back, we’re gonna breaking it down for you so you know all about these great phrases and how to talk about not real situations with your friends.

A: Okay, next question. If Eric asked you out on a date, what would you say?

B: Duh! I would say yes! Eric is the most popular kid in school! Okay, my turn. What would you do if you won the lottery?

A: Let’s see.. If I won the lottery, I would buy two tickets for a trip around the world.

B: If you buy me a ticket I will go with you for sure!

A: My dad will freak out if I even mention a trip like that!

B: Alright this is a good one. What would your mom say if you told her you are going to get married?

A: If I told her that, she would faint and have me committed!

Alright, so I think that was clear and well, a very common situation. 2 teenage girls talking to each other about boys and what would you do—

Guys do this too. So don’t just put it on girls, okay?

I don’t think we do it like this though.

No, but it’s actually a very popular game in the card to play, the what if game.

The what if game, exactly. And that’s exactly the topic that we want to talk about today is the structure, What if, which is actually called a conditional.

All right, the conditional because the results, the thing that happens depends on something else.

Exactly.

So let’s actually take a look at the words in today’s language take away before we talk about all this grammar stuff.

Language take away.

Okay, so we start out with some basic words. Well, they were talking about guys and she said, if Eric asked you out, right? So, to ask somebody out

Okay, so this might be a little bit strange because you think okay to ask is to ask a question, but to ask out, it’s a fixed phrase. It’s something you say, these two words go together, right? So, I want to ask someone out, that means I want to invite someone on a date.

on a romantic date, usually.

So yeah, I want to ask him out to dinner or he asked me out to the movies.

Now if I didn’t want to ask somebody out on a romantic date, what verb would you use?

I’d say you could invite someone out. But then again, it’s always a little bit what you can save invite for someone if you gonna ask them on a date, too. So, I say to ask out is always romantic. And to invite can be romantic or just friends.

Okay, so to ask somebody out. Now, they were talking about other situations. Maybe they would go on a trip or something and she said, my dad would freak out.

This is a great phrase. This is something that I used a lot when I was a teenager.

The word freak out?

freak out, so the verb to freak out means to be really angry or upset or it could be a good thing or a bad thing, but usually when we’re talking about our parents, it’s a bad thing.

So, they get angry, they start yelling at you.

Yes, so freak out means like overreact.

Alright. And the last word that we have in language take away today is a committed.

Well, look at the whole phrase. He says, she would have me committed. So this is actually being done to someone.

Now, we did look at this word before but basically for marriage, right? To commit to somebody, to promise.

Yeah, but to have someone committed means that you’re going to send them away to maybe a mental institution.

exactly

so this means they have psychological problems and someone else sends them to the hospital because they can’t send themselves.

Exactly, so it’s always used to have someone committed, right?

Right, cause it’s being done to them. They don’t want it to happen. It’s involuntary.

Okay, so she had him committed.

My mom’s gonna have me committed if I keep working 20 hours a day.

Exactly, So that’s the way you use it. And so now you have another way of using this verb. But now I think we should listen to this dialogue again. We’re gonna slow it down a little bit and then we’ll come back and look at this grammar focus that we wanna talk about.

A: Okay, next question. If Eric asked you out on a date, what would you say?

B: Duh! I would say yes! Eric is the most popular kid in school! Okay, my turn. What would you do if you won the lottery?

A: Let’s see.. If I won the lottery, I would buy two tickets for a trip around the world.

B: If you buy me a ticket I will go with you for sure!

A: My dad will freak out if I even mention a trip like that!

B: Alright this is a good one. What would your mom say if you told her you are going to get married?

A: If I told her that, she would faint and have me committed!

Alright, so we understood all the vocab now. Now let’s take a look at these unreal situations and what we were saying about what if game.

Right, so I think it’s important to push these into two different categories, right? We have one kind where it’s very unrealistic. It’s probably not going to happen that kind of situation. And the other one is a situation that could very well happen. Something that’s probably very common. Okay, so to the first one we’re gonna talk about is very unrealistic situations, things that probably won’t happen.

Okay, so let’s take a good look at an example that we found in the dialogue. The most common one and I think everybody gets to ask this question is, if you won the lottery, what would you do?

Okay, if you won the lottery. So this is a situation that’s very uncommon, right? Not many people win the lottery. So we have to say, if you won the lottery. We use this verb in the past tense. If you won the lottery, if this happen, what would you do?

right

all right

so, Catherine, if you won the lottery, what would you do?

If I won the lottery, I would buy a boat and sail around the world with my friends.

Alright, so another example. Again, using the same structure, right? The verb in the simple past tense, we would say, if you were stuck on an island with one other person who would that be?

Alright. So if you were stuck on a desert island with one person who would that person be?

So, Marco, I’m going to ask you. Who would it be?

I think it would be an engineer or a scientist that could probably get me off the island.

What about your girlfriend?

Well, you know that’s the point. If I can get to her quicker.

Okay, I would say maybe kind romantic situation—so, that’s the first situation. We’ve got these situations, like being stuck on an island, winning the lottery. These are very un-likely. But what about the other kind.

But before we move on to that, you notice that we used the verb was. We didn’t say if I was on an island. I said if I were, right? Or if you were. So, this is the way that you use in these conditionals. If I were you, or if you were president of the United States.

And this is a rule, so this is a grammar rule. When I can describe why it happens because it’s very complicated and you can look it up on our site but we’re going to describe how to use it. That’s the most important. So, we can say for example: Marco, if I were you I would die my hair red.

Why?

I don’t know. I think you might look cool. If I were you, I would– Or if you were me, what would you do?

exactly. So we always use it like this, right? Like if you’re going to use this conditional, always use were for the subject, never was.

Right, so you can tell. This is a very, very big grammar issue. A lot of English speakers make this mistake

very many. So, but now you know that you shouldn’t make this mistake and you can speak properly. Alright, so now that we’ve seen these semi-unreal situations, let’s move on to something that’s a little bit more probable, that it may happen.

Bul I also got these situations that are common or likely. For example, in this lesson we hear I will go with you for sure. So this is if you buy me a ticket to travel, of course I will go with you. So if you buy, this is in the present tense, if you by, then I will.

Right. So, now you notice the difference. The verb is in the present and then we use instead of wood, we use will. So again, I can say if it rains tomorrow, I will stay home and watch TV all day.

Okay. So, think about this. Before we talked about going to the desert islands; now we’re talking about rain and the weather. They are very very different. The rain is very common so we can say if it rains tomorrow, I will need an umbrella. What about this? If we have lunch tomorrow, what will we eat?

Okay, so we have lunch pretty much every day, right?

Yeah, pretty much

So, again, it’s a situation that is very probable, so if we have lunch tomorrow, we will probably eat pasta, I think. I like pasta.

Pasta? Noodles?

Yeah.

Right. So, Marco let’s take another listen to some of these phrases and try and figure out why you’re listening which kind of conditional it is. Is it first or the second?

Example 1

If it’s sunny today, we will go to the park.

Example 2

I would get a divorce if I were you.

Example 3

Mary will be very sad if Joe leaves.

Example 4

We wouldn’t be so late if Nick drove faster.

Very good. So we heard different examples and the first conditional is the one that we mentioned is very probable. And the second conditional is the one that’s not so probable. So, they’re very easy to distinguish. You don’t really need to know the names just know how to use them, right?

Exactly. And so just remember, if you were me, what would you do? We’ve got these kind of pairs, these words that go together. And the other one is more common. If it rains tomorrow, I will bring an umbrella.

Perfect. So, why don’t we listen to this dialogue for the last time, just to kind of reinforce everything and then we’ll come back and talk a little bit more.

A: Okay, next question. If Eric asked you out on a date, what would you say?

B: Duh! I would say yes! Eric is the most popular kid in school! Okay, my turn. What would you do if you won the lottery?

A: Let’s see.. If I won the lottery, I would buy two tickets for a trip around the world.

B: If you buy me a ticket I will go with you for sure!

A: My dad will freak out if I even mention a trip like that!

B: Alright this is a good one. What would your mom say if you told her you are going to get married?

A: If I told her that, she would faint and have me committed!

So, Marco, if we talk anymore about grammar, someone’s gonna have to have me committed.

It is a little bit difficult to talk about grammar, especially on a podcast. Cause it’s such a difficult topic and it’s also kind of heavy, right?

It is but I’ll tell you this. These are very very common phrases. People’ll use these all the time. We talk of hypotheticals very often. So, if you’re asking for advice, for example, or if you just playing a game in the car, you’re going to encounter these and it’s very important to be able to know how to use them.

So and this is what we want to see. Now, please come to our website at Englishpob.com and you have a million questions, you have a million hypotheticals that you can leave on our website. So, let us know. Ask us the craziest, funniest, weirdest questions that you can, right?

Exactly. And if you have questions about the stuff that we’ve been talking, but you’re not really clear on some things, just ask us because we’re happy to answer your questions and give more examples on the website.

Alright, so we’ll see you guys there and until next time, bye.