The conditional tenseWhen do we use the conditional tense?

The conditional tense is used to talk about what would happen in the future:

It is often used with the following expressions:

Examples:

• après mes vacances, j’aimerais voyager en Australie - I'd like to travel to Australia after my holidays

How to form the conditional tense

To form the conditional tense, we need to add the imperfect endings to the future stem (ie with regular -er and -ir verbs the endings are added directly to the infinitive of the verb, and with regular -re verbs, take the final -e off the infinitive and add the endings).

Conditional endings

Examples:

• regarder → je regarderais - I would watch
• finir → tu finirais - you would finish
• prendre → il/elle/on prendrait - he/she/it would take
• manger → nous mangerions - we would eat
• partir → vous partiriez - you would leave
• vendre → ils/elles vendraient - they would sell