The third conditional

Welcome back, children!

This week we are going to study the third conditional in English. We already saw the first and the second conditional, so if you would like to refresh or revise them have a look at the previous posts.

Now, the third conditional, when do we use it?

We use the third conditional for talking about hypothetical situations in the past. In general, we use this tense for regretting that something happened or didn't happen in the past.

For example, imagine you had an English test a week ago, but you didn't study and you failed it. In this case, you could find yourself saying:

If I had studied, I would have passed...

Thus, you are talking about something that happened in the past but that you CANNOT CHANGE it anymore. In this case, you are somehow regretting that you hadn't studied enough.

Let's see another example:

I would have bought you a present if I had known it was your birthday...

Here, I did not know it was your birthday, so I regret it. If I had known, though, I would have got you something: maybe some flowers, maybe some chocolate... who knows? But what matters here is that I did not know it was your birthday, so I CANNOT CHANGE the past. I can only regret about it!

Now, what about the structure?

As always, you have two clauses:

Conditional clause: If I had studied - If + subject + had + past participle main verb

Result clause: I would have passed - subject + modal verb (would, could, might, may) + have + past participle

As we know, we can invert the clauses, and we would need to get rid of the comma:

I would have passed if I had studied.

Have a look at the following story from the British Council website in order to fully understand the context in which you can find or use the third conditional in English.

Credit: Third conditional. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 7 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNelekMirTI

That's it for today,

Pablo.