Grammar: Conditional (present)

ByFast French

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.”
PersonFuture simple stemImperfect endingResultEnglishEnglish shorter
jedonner-aisje donneraisI would giveI’d give
tudonner-aistu donneraisyou would giveyou’d give
ildonner-aitil donneraithe would givehe’d give
nousdonner-ionsnous donnerionswe would givewe’d give
vousdonner-iezvous donneriezyou would giveyou’d give
ilsdonner-aientils donneraientthey would givethey’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-).

PersonFuture simple stemImperfect endingResultEnglishEnglish shorter
jeser-aisje seraisI would beI’d be
tuser-aistu seraisyou would beyou’d be
ilser-aitil seraithe would behe’d be
nousser-ionsnous serionswe would bewe’d be
vousser-iezvous seriezyou would beyou’d be
ilsser-aientils seraientthey would bethey’d be

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