Herramientas de la lengua
Cláusulas con "si"
Why do you want to know this?
We spend half our lives planning for things that might happen and our language has evolved so we can express all those possibilities. We want to make sure we are accurate when talking about these situations
Las cláusulas con “si”
Depending on when we are presenting the hypothetical, and how possible it is, we use different tenses. For example:
- If I finish early, I call you = Si termino temprano, te llamo
- Back in those days, if I finished early I would call you = En esos días, si terminaba temprano te llamaba
- If I were to finish early, I would call you = Si terminara temprano, te llamaría
- If I had finished early, I would have called you = Si hubiera terminado temprano, te habría llamado
The first two are fairly simple but the last two need more attention. In order to express these ideas we need to remember the imperfect subjunctive, the pluperfect subjunctive, the conditional and the conditional perfect
¡Practiquemos!
Quieres practicar conjugaciones en el condicional? Practica aquí
Quieres practicar conjugaciones condicional perfecto? Practica aquí
Quieres practicar conjugaciones en Imperfecto subjuntivo? Practica aquí
Quieres practicar conjugaciones en pluscuamperfecto subjuntivo? Practica aquí
2. Which verb do we use in each clause?
Notice in the last two constructions we use:
Subjunctive for the “if” clause and conditional for the “then” clause
Imperfect subjunctive – conditional
- Si fuera presidente cambiaría las leyes
- Si tuviera tiempo, haría la tarea
- Si pudiera comer cualquier cosa, comería una torta
Pluperfect subjunctive – conditional perfect
- Si hubiera sabido que venías, habría hecho un pastel
- Si hubiéramos hecho la tarea, habríamos logrado una A
- Si hubieran salido a caminar todos los días, habían sido más saludables
¡Practiquemos!
¡Hola! A continuación tienes algo para practicar. Debes lograr al menos 80% ¡Suerte!
This unit “Cláusulas con ‘si’” was created by Alegría Ribadeneira by combining original material and sections about verbs from Spanish411.net, licensed CC BY-NC-SA and Spanish Grammar Manual by Enrique Yépez licensed CC BY-NC-SA.
