The Conditional tense expresses the idea that you WOULD do something, if a specific condition is met. So in English, it involves either the word “would” or its abbreviation “‘d” (apostrophe d).

If we take the English verb “to give,” its conditional would be “I would give” or “I’d give.” The conditional of the English verb “to take” is either “I would take” or “I’d take.” In the negative sense, these would be “I wouldn’t give” or “I’d not give” and “I wouldn’t take” or “I’d not take.”

These are all examples of the Present Conditional. There is also a Past Conditional, which means “would have (given, etc).” That will be explained in a separate post.

How to form the Conditional tense in French:

1. Decide which person is doing the action (I, you, he/she, we, you, they) and select the appropriate pronoun (je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils).
2. Find the Future Simple stem of the verb in question (eg the future simple of “donner” is “donner-“).
3. Add the relevant Imperfect Tense ending to the Future Simple stem (the Imperfect endings are “-ais,” “-ais,” “-ait,” “-ions,” “-iez,” “-aient.”

Person	Future simple stem	Imperfect ending	Result	English	English shorter
je	donner-	ais	je donnerais	I would give	I’d give
tu	donner-	ais	tu donnerais	you would give	you’d give
il	donner-	ait	il donnerait	he would give	he’d give
nous	donner-	ions	nous donnerions	we would give	we’d give
vous	donner-	iez	vous donneriez	you would give	you’d give
ils	donner-	aient	ils donneraient	they would give	they’d give

Conditional tense of irregular verbs

Verbs with an irregular future simple stem will use that stem to form the conditional. These are verbs like être (ser-), avoir (aur-), faire (fer-), aller (ir-), venir (viendr-), devoir (devr-), vouloir (voudr-), pouvoir (pourr-), savoir (saur-), voir (verr-), valoir (vaudr-), pleuvoir (pleuvr-), courir (courr-) and envoyer (enverr-). See below for the Conditional conjugation of the verb être (ser-).

Person	Future simple stem	Imperfect ending	Result	English	English shorter
je	ser-	ais	je serais	I would be	I’d be
tu	ser-	ais	tu serais	you would be	you’d be
il	ser-	ait	il serait	he would be	he’d be
nous	ser-	ions	nous serions	we would be	we’d be
vous	ser-	iez	vous seriez	you would be	you’d be
ils	ser-	aient	ils seraient	they would be	they’d be