Spanish · Chapter 17 · Lesson 4 · Grammar primer

Si clauses

On the AQA A-level grammar list.

The short version

No conditional ever follows si

One rule outranks everything else here: no conditional and no present subjunctive ever follows si. Si tendría and si tenga are both simply wrong, and English 'if I would have' is what plants the error. The si half of an unreal condition takes the imperfect subjunctive, and the -ría form waits in the result half.

Si tuviera dinero, viajaría por el mundo.

If I had money, I would travel the world.

Spanish never says if it will rain

English happily says 'if it will rain'; Spanish never does. The if half of a real, open condition stays in the present indicative, and the future lives only in the result half. Each of the three types has its own fixed pairing, so match the box to how real the if actually is and the grammar becomes mechanical.

Si llueve, me quedaré en casa.

If it rains, I will stay home.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Practice

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10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 22 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 4 of 14 in this chapter

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