Learning English

Free worksheet and transcript

____________________________________________________________________________

Watch all episodes
____________________________________________________________________________

Contracting conditional sentences to sound more fluent 

Sometimes we contract groups of words to make them shorter and to make the sentence more efficient. For example 'I am' becomes 'I'm'. They can help us speak a bit faster and more fluently. Conditional sentences can be quite long, so it can help to introduce contractions to make them shorter. In this episode, Beth and Georgie focus on contracting the third conditional for more fluent pronunciation.

If you need help with the grammar of conditionals, click here. 

Third conditional full sentences

• If the train had been cancelled, I would have got a bus. 
• If Phil had arrived earlier, he would not have missed the train.
• If we had known, we would have helped. 

Third conditional contracted sentences

• If the train'd been cancelled, I would've got a bus.
• If Phil'd arrived earlier, he wouldn'thave missed the train. (You can go further and say wouldn't've, but it's non-standard in written English)
• If we'd known, we would've helped.

Top tips

• In contractions, 'had' is pronounced /əd/ and 'have' is pronounced /əv/ when the word before it ends in a consonant sound, like Phil'd - /fɪləd/- and would've - /wʊdəv/. 
• When contracted, 'had' becomes /d/ when the word before it ends in a vowel sound, like we'd - /wiːd/ or I'd - /aɪd/.
• Contractions with pronouns (e.g. we'd and she'd) are common in written form. Whereas, contractions with other nouns such as train (e.g. train'd and Phil'd) are fine in speech, but they are non-standard in written form. 
• Sometimes 'would've' is shortened even further in speech to 'woulda' - /wʊdə/.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To do

Practise by using the worksheet on this page. The clip we heard came from an episode of Conditionals with Georgie about the third conditional.

Next

Learn more about connected speech in Tim's Pronunciation Workshop.