Come on you've got to let me know. Should I stay or should I go?
if you say that you are mine, I will stay here
till the end of time.
If I go there will be trouble,
but if I stay, it will be double.
so come on let me know just tell me what
it is you want!
You want to know how to use the first
and second conditionals? That's it?
Ok I'll explain and I promise
you won't be disappointed
and you'll know it perfectly. But first
of all I have something to tell you.
You're not going to like it but there's
also a zero conditional. Don't look at me
like that!
It's quite simple. So with the zero
conditional something at some point is
definitely going to happen. For example
"if it's hot, I usually wear a hat."
You know it's the zero conditional because
IF can be changed to WHEN without a
change of meaning. "When it's hot, I
usually wear a hat" both parts are in the
present tense you see. In all
Conditionals you have a condition and the
the result of that condition and in all
the conditionals you can put the clause
in any order. yes I know (the 0 conditional) is not a real
conditional I just wanted to give you
the whole picture. So "I usually wear a
hat, if it's hot" you see you can put the
clauses in any order it's just the same
but if you ASK me a question I answer
it properly. By the way there's a comma
after the condition and before the
result. So it's like this. Let's look at
the first conditional. The first
conditional (also called the future
conditional) because we do not know what
will happen in the future do we? It so might
happen or it might not but it's
certainly possible.
"if Alice comes this evening, we'll eat Chinese food!"
who's Alice? that's just an example don't be
like that. "If you are nice with me, I'll
be nice with you". What's that? Do we
always have to use WILL? No you can
substitute WILL for another modal and
that's true of all conditionals in the
second conditional, which we'll come to in a minute,
you could substitute WOULD for another
modal so for example. "If we go and get
ice cream,
I might get pistachio". Now let's
look at the second conditional. It's
IF + past tense + WOULD + plus verb
we use the second conditional to talk
about improbable or impossible
situations. We are talking here about
present or future improbability.
For example "If I had more time, I would spend
it with you". Unfortunately I don't it's
just like that. "If she lived in London
she would go to the theatre every
weekend" Remember in the conditional with
the verb TO BE we say WERE for all
persons. In spoken English you might hear
WAS "If I was" but if you're writing or
speaking speaking formally use WERE.
what's that? for example:
"If I were the president, I would make beer free." Got it?
good. Friends again? Great
stay mellow.