Professor Dave again, let’s learn the past conditional tense.
We just learned about the conditional mood and when it is used, as well as how to form
verbs in the present conditional tense.
These were instances where we could say what someone would do if some condition were to be met.
Now let’s learn about the past conditional tense, or condizionale passato.
This has a few different uses, all of which end up meaning something like I would have.
If I had known you were coming to dinner, I would have cooked more food.
Like the other compound tenses, past conditional is formed with the auxiliary avere or essere,
followed by the past participle, and the rules for this will be the same rules we used when
learning the present perfect indicative.
Let’s just note that transitive verbs will use avere, while intransitive verbs and reflexive
verbs will use essere, and it is this auxiliary that will be conjugated into the conditional.
Let’s begin with transitive verbs, which will use avere.
I would have eaten, as in, if I had known there wouldn’t be any food at the party,
I would have eaten beforehand.
Now let’s go through the full conjugation with ballare.
When the auxiliary is essere, it will conjugate just as avere did, but the participle will
change to match gender and number.
A reflexive verb will conjugate like an intransitive one, but you will have to remember to add
the reflexive pronoun.
Now that we can conjugate these two auxiliaries into this tense, let’s see what past conditional
is used for.
Generally speaking, the conditional of the past describes a potential fact that is contingent
on something else.
Let’s now get more specific.
First, it can be used to describe something that should have happened in the past, but
didn’t for some reason.
It can be used to express doubt.
It can express a wish or desire held in the past that is not feasible in the future.
It can be used to express supposition or allegation, where using the present perfect indicative
would make the statement completely certain.
It can indicate advice.
Last but not least, past conditional is used to express a future action from a past point of view.
This may sound a little confusing, but just look at the difference between these two statements.
Notice that having the main verb in a past tense is what triggers the switch from future
to past conditional.
Let’s look at just a couple more examples for good measure.
And that’s it for the past conditional tense, so let’s check comprehension.