So, the second conditional is similar but different from the first conditional because here
it's talking about an unlikely or hypothetical condition, and its probable result. Do you
guys know what this word means, hypothetical? Hypothetical means not real or imagined. Right,
I’m just imagining what would happen. The time is now, or any other time and the situation is again
hypothetical, not real, just imagined, so we're not talking necessarily about real life. What will
happen? What I will do if something happens? Let's take a look at how this conditional is different.
So here in our first clause, we're using the simple past
and for our main clause we're using present conditional or present continuous conditional. So
what is that in simpler terms? If this thing happened that thing would
happen. So here again, just imagining if you went to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired. So,
this means you didn't go to bed early right. You are maybe, if you're tired today and I see you,
if you went to bed earlier you wouldn't be so tired. So if you had done this thing in the past,
what would the result be? You wouldn't be so tired if the weather wasn't so bad,
we would go to the beach. So here again just imagining, just hypothetical, not real.
So, if the weather wasn't so bad, we would go to the beach. This means ugh the weather is bad,
so we cannot go to the beach today. But oh, imagine if the weather wasn't
so bad, we would go to the beach. Just imagining right, not real, hypothetical.
Let's look at some more examples of the second conditional.
If I was the president, I would give everyone more vacation days. Right, this is not real,
unfortunately I am not the president, or maybe fortunately I am not the president uh but if I
was I would give everyone more vacation days. Again hypothetical, if this thing happened
if I was the president, then this thing would happen. I would give everyone more vacation days.
If you really loved me, you would visit me more often. So, here we have our past uh if clause. If
you really loved me, and then our conditional using would. You would visit me more often.
If I had more money, I would travel everywhere. So again, imagining if I had more money,
I would travel anywhere. I’m sure in an English class sometime in the past your teacher may have
asked you hypothetical questions like this. What would you do if you were president? If I was the
president, I would da da. What would you do if you won the lottery? If I won the lottery, I would…
So this is second conditional; not real, hypothetical.
One thing to note, so here in number one I say; if I “was,” but it is very common to say
if I “were.” So, this is called the subjunctive mood. If I were you, I would give up smoking. Or,
if I were a plan, I would love rain. So you can use was, but it is correct and very common to say:
if I were. When we're using this conditional form, also just like we could for our first conditional,
we can use modal verbs in the main clause of this form to change our certainty.
We might buy a larger house if we had more money. So, here's our oh oh we're stuck whoops.
So, uh didn't mean to scribble that out. So here our if clause: if we had more money,
we might buy a larger house. So here right, not real, if we had more money, but we don't,
but if we did, I can also use might or may words like this. If I’m not really sure what I would do.
Oh, if I won the lottery, I might travel to every country. Or I might do this, I might do that.
All right so this is our second conditional which we use to talk about things that are not real
and we're just imagining. Right, hypothetical is the word to use for this one.