What would Dan buy his mum if he won $1m? A review of conditionals

Hi Guys! Dan for BBC Learning English here. This time we’re going to talk about conditionals. Now many of you may know that conditionals are sentences which commonly but not always begin with if in English. We have five of them and they usually talk about cause and effect. Either now or in the future or in the past. We’re gonna have a look at all of them today. Are you ready? Here we go.

If it rains, we get wet. This is an example of a zero conditional . Zeros have no maybes or possibilities in them. They talk about cause and result: If it rains, we get wet . You’ll notice that they use the present on both sides but past forms are also possible. For example, If it rained, we stayed inside .

First conditionals are a little bit more tricky. First conditionals talk about a possible, real future or present outcome. For example, If I leave now, I’ll get home early . They use present tense on the If side and they use will + the infinitive on the main clause.

Second conditionals . If I had a million dollars, I would buy my mum a horse . That’s a second conditional. It talks about a highly unlikely or most likely impossible outcome of a present or future situation. Second conditionals are really confusing because we use past tense verbs on the ‘If’ clause but actually we’re talking in the present tense. If I had a million, I would buy. Notice that the main clause uses would plus the infinitive . Got it? Good.

Third conditionals . Third conditionals are always impossible because we cannot travel back in time … yet… Anyway, so… If I hadn’t drunk so much, I wouldn’t have been arrested . On the ‘If’ clause we use the past perfect - ‘If I hadn’t drunk’ - and in the main clause we have would + have + the past participle . This usually is used for past mistakes.

Finally, we have mixed conditionals . For example, If I hadn ‘t been born a boy, I would be a girl ! Anyway, that’s where we take half of one conditional and half of another conditional and mix them together - usually third to second.

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I’ve been Dan, you’ve been great. Get out of here! Bye.