If you had to say which mood is used in the bolded part of this sentence, what would be your guess? Well, you may have guessed just from reading the title that this is an example of the conditional mood, used to talk about hypothetical situations that are conditional or dependent on something else. In European Portuguese, it’s called condicionalconditional (or futuro do pretérito in Brazil) and it’s a single-tense mood.
Forming Conditional Conjugations
The conditional in Portuguese is a very easy mood to conjugate. All you need to do is take the infinitive form of a verb and add the following endings:
| Pronoun/Person | Ending |
|---|---|
| Eu | -ia |
| Tu | -ias |
| Ele, ela, você | -ia |
| Nós | -íamos |
| Eles, elas, vocês | -iam |
And you’re in luck — there are only three irregular verbs in the conditional!:
dizerto say fazerto do trazerto bring
For these three verbs, before adding the endings above, you first need to replace the final –zer with –r, which leaves you with the roots dir-, far– and trar-. As an example, this is how the verb dizer would be conjugated in the conditional:
| Pronoun/Person | Conjugation |
|---|---|
| Eu | diriaI would say |
| Tu | diriasyou(sing.inf.) would say |
| Ele, ela, você | diriahe, she, you(sing.form.) would say |
| Nós | diríamoswe would say |
| Eles, elas, vocês | diriamthey, you(plural) would say |
For every verb other than dizer, fazer, and trazer, the infinitive remains unchanged before adding the endings, even for verbs that are highly irregular in all other moods, such as serto be :
| Pronoun/Person | Conjugation |
|---|---|
| Eu | seriaI would be |
| Tu | seriasyou(sing.inf.) would be |
| Ele, ela, você | seriahe, she, you(sing.form.) would be |
| Nós | seríamoswe would be |
| Eles, elas, vocês | seriamthey, you(plural) would be |
Using the Conditional in Sentences
The main challenge when using the conditional is really the rest of the sentence! It can be challenging to properly construct full sentences because the conditional often needs to be combined with other, more complicated moods/tenses, such as the imperfect subjunctive and the personal infinitive. You can’t fully master the conditional without decent knowledge of other verb forms. Let’s look at a few examples to give you some familiarity with how the conditional is used in sentences.
Using the conditional to discuss hypothetical situations
Se eu fosse rico, eu não trabalharia.If I were rich, I would not work. Fosse is an imperfect subjunctive (pretérito imperfeito do conjuntivo) form of serto be and helps establish the condition under which the second part of the sentence holds true.
Para teres tempo, tu terias de cancelar alguns compromissos.For you to have time, you would have to cancel some commitments. Teres is one of the personal infinitive (infinitivo pessoal) forms of terto have .
Ninguém adivinharia a sua idade!No one would guess your age! This sentence is trickier because, rather than being added to the sentence, the condition is merely implied. No one would guess this person’s age if they tried or if they saw them.
Other variations of the conditional
The conditional can also be used in sentences that are set in a past time, but describe a future event. This helps explain why it can also be called futuro do pretérito (future of the past).
Eu não acreditava que tu virias.I didn't believe that you would come.
Ele disse que mudaria o seu comportamento.He said that he would change his behaviour.
The conditional can also be expressed without using it at all! In European Portuguese, it’s accepted in casual speech to replace the conditional by the imperfect past (pretérito imperfeito do indicativo), with no change in meaning.
Se eu pudesse, faria tudo outra vez.If I could, I would do everything again. = Se eu pudesse, fazia tudo outra vez.If I could, I would do everything again.
Good intro to the conditional, guys!
For English speakers in particular, the conditional is often used to soften or make a demand or request more polite. For example, “I would (I’d) like a beer” as opposed to “I want a beer”. In my observation, here in Lisbon, more often than not, I’ll hear the present indicative used very often in that type of situation. So when the butcher says, “Diga!”, I might hear the customer say “quero”, or as you mentioned, the imperfect indicative “queria”, more often than “quereria”, although the conditional “quereria” would be correct, as well. Or in a restaurant, when in English I would say, “Could you please bring…”, it seems like I hear the present indicative “Pode trazer…” extremely often, without any attenuation of politeness. I’m curious to hear, what do you guys think?
Thanks, Michael. I agree that not everyone uses the conditional or imperfect when asking for things, or not all the time. That’s not a problem, because body language and tone can also convey politeness/friendliness on their own (if the person wants to seem friendly!). Ideally, people would still remember to add a “por favor/se faz favor” and/or, most importantly, “obrigado/obrigada” 🙂
Thank you very much for this unit. It’s something that has been bothering/puzzling me on and off for around 5 years and this is the best explanation by far!! Muito obrigada!
Thanks Barbara, so glad we could help! 🙂
Olá,
no lição você escreveu “Eles diriam para nós começarmos a comer”
posso também dizer “ Eles diriam para nós que começarmos a comer “ e
“Eles diziam no-lo começarmos a comer”. Ou talvez mude o significado?
Obrigado e cumprimentos
Manfred
Olá, Manfred. Nenhuma das alternativas é gramaticalmente correta. Uma alternativa possível, para substituir o “nós”, é dizer “Eles dir-nos-iam para começarmos a comer”, mas não é habitual na linguagem informal.
Quanto ao pronome clítico ‘-(l)o’, ele substitui todo o complemento direto (direct object), então, com o clítico, a frase ficaria reduzida a: “Eles dir-no-lo-iam”! (-no = nós & -lo = para começarmos a comer) Também não é uma construção habitual.
Obrigado pela sua resposta. Então a tradução da frase “Eles dir-no-lo-iam”! em inglês seria “They would say it to us”?
Como o senhor sabe, sou alemão e sinto-me como caminhante entre três mundos línguísticos. Não é pêra doce. (Não sei se posso dizer isso).
Cumprimentos
Manfred
De nada, Manfred! Exato, a tradução inglesa seria essa 🙂 (“Não é pêra doce” está correto e muito bem aplicado. Ah, e podes tratar-me por tu)
That was a clear and good introduction, muito bem
Many thanks!
Olá
I have seen the conjugation for the conditional online (perhaps an issue with finding mainly BP vs EP, ex. coojugator.com) with a different ending for vós/vocês (ending in “íeis”) rather than being the same as the third person plural. How does this potential mix-up between BP and EP affect other tenses/endings with the 2PP & 3PP?
Love the videos!
Obrigado
Rick
I’ve read on a few sites that using the imperfect past in place of the conditional is accepted in casual speech, as you said. However, teachers on Estudo em Casa explicitly teach the use of the imperfect with the imperfect subjunctive and make no mention of this use being casual. How incorrect is it? If I were to go on a job interview, should I make sure not to use it? Would it be better to avoid it altogether and just use the conditional? Thank you!
Well, this is an aspect where Portuguese is evolving towards simplification, and so, you’ll find more and more people using the imperfect in place of the conditional in any context, including job interviews – it should not be a deal breaker at all, unless you’re applying for a writer/editor position, maybe 🙂 I’m far from being an authority on this, but I would say it’s (still) not ideal to teach it as if it were the standard, but it’s fine to acknowledge it as an alternative, especially in casual contexts.
Faz sentido! Muito obrigada pela sua resposta! 🙂
Thank you all for this very clear explanation of the Conditional in combination with the Subjunctive and Personal Infinitive tenses.
Thank you very much for this Unit. I found it very helpful.
In one of the following lessons there’s the phrase: “Se não tivéssemos carro iríamos a pé até à praia”. Why isn’t there an article before “carro”?
The sentence is supposed to sound general. You’re saying that if you didn’t have a car (any car), you’d have to walk. An indefinite article could be added (e.g. “se não tivéssemos UM carro”), but it’s not grammatically required and the meaning is clear without it, so we usually don’t feel the need for it. As for a definite article, it should only be added if we wanted to make the sentence more specific, i.e. talking about a particular car and not just cars in general (e.g. “se não tivéssemos O carro” – if we didn’t have THE car).
In this example “ gostaria de lhe fazer umas perguntas se não importar”
The lhe is placed before the verb? I do not recall de as a trigger word
And i noticed the personal infinitive importar… which I struggle to figure out
Yes, prepositions (except the preposition “a”) also work as ‘magnetic’ words to some extent. In their presence, clitic pronouns are preferably placed before the verb, but it’s also acceptable to keep them after the verb as long as the verb is in the infinitive. So, in this case, both of these would be acceptable:
– Gostaria de lhe fazer…
– Gostaria de fazer-lhe…
“Importar” is actually conjugated in the future subjunctive, although it looks the same as the personal infinitive! This is always a tricky one.
Is “queria” not also an irregular in the conditional, because it is not “quereria”?
The conditional form of the verb querer is actually “quereria” (for 1st, 3rd person and formal 2nd person singular) 🙂 “Queria” is an imperfect past form. We do use it often as a de facto conditional, though (as we do for other verbs, as explained at the end of this article).