Hello everyone,
and welcome back to the forth part of our mini series on the Conditional in German. And this time, we’ll look at the stuff everybody is struggling with.
Past Conditional
Past Conditional is what you need when you want to talk about how the past could have been, but wasn’t. So in practical terms that means today, we’ll finally talk about how to say stuff like would have been, would have had or would have had to have been in German. Which is something EVERYBODY is making mistakes with. Even thosenative speakers that always walk around with their nose up like they’re fluent or something #callingoutnatives.
Seriously though, building the Past Conditional itself is actually quite straight forward. But there’s something weird going on with the word order at time.
“But Emanuel, there’s ALWAYS something weird going on with the word order in German.”
Well yeah, I guess. But take the weird-ness you’re used to and then twist that. It is kind of messed up, actually.
But Past Conditional is super useful and you absolutely need it if you really want to express yourself, so let’s buckle up and jump righ… oh wait, I guess, I should give you the links to the first three parts real quick, so you can read up on that if you haven’t. Part one is an overview over the topic and the terminology and also we learn how to build the würde-conditional. Part two is about how to build and when to use the real conditional and part three is an epic exercise for that stuff.
Conditional 1- An Overview
Conditional 2 German – The Real Conditional
Conditional 3 – Exercise
Great, so now let’s jump in for real :)
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Ich glaube, dass diese Seite ein update bekommen hat. Ich erinnere mich sie nicht so (wie früher). Es freut mich. Jedenfalls…
Deine Methode – Schritt für Schritt, ok?
Es ist hilfreich. Es war hilfreich. Es wäre hilfreich (wenn wir…blah blah). Es wäre hilfreich gewesen (wenn wir…blah blah)
Es ist leicht (etwas zu tun). Es war leicht. Es wäre leicht. Es wäre leicht gewesen.
Das letztes:
Es ist notwendig. Es war notwendig. Es wäre notwendig. Es wäre notwendig gewesen.
Hoffentlich alles gut. Frage:
“Heute essen wir Pizza!”
Das wäre gut. oder Das wird gut sein.
Would vs Will be when dealing with present/futurish? Should I even worry about the second one? I would love to keep werden it is own place in my head :)
Ja, cih mache aktuell viele Updates :)
“Heute essen wir Pizza!”
Das wäre gut. oder Das wird gut sein.
Definitiv “Das wäre gut.”
“wird gut sein” braucht man echt selten. Eigentlich nur für Annahmen, nicht für Zukunft. Da würde man einfach sagen “Das wird gut.” denn werden impliziert “sein”.
I’ve come back to review this , and it was just as terrific as the first time. My question is related to modal verbs. If I wanted to say “I would have wanted to play the piano better”, the three step rule would seem to be “ich hätte besser Klavier spielen können”, right? But could you also say “Ich hätte gern besser Klavier gespielt”? I feel like there’s a nuance here I’m missing. Thanks!
– Ich hätte besser Klavier spielen können.
This lacks the idea of wanting.
– I would have been able to play the piano better.
– I could have played the piano better.
The German sentence is basically a derivative of “Ich kann besser Klavier spielen” and there’s no wanting in this either.
– Ich hätte gern besser Klavier gespielt.
This means “I would have liked to play the piano better.” so basically, it lines up with your original. An alternative with wollen would be
– Ich hätte besser Klavier spielen wollen.
– Ich hätte besser Klavier spielen können wollen.
But yeah, the version with “gern” is the best in most contexts, I’d say.
This is great, the material and exercises really help me to refresh the Konjunktiv.
Perfect, happy to hear that!
Great system!
Why does the spoken past for “sein” use “sein” as the helper verb? There doesn’t seem to be any motion or change of state—just being.
“Because German” would be a satisfactory answer, but is there any deeper reason?
You just have to think of “bleiben”, which also goes with “sein”.
“bleiben” is explicitely the LACK of change of state, pretty much. And you can think of “sein” as “being in a state”.
And in some way, “being in a state” and “NOT changing state” do belong in one bucket with “change of state”.
But “because German” also works :). It’s not like people back in the day assigned the helper after a philosophical deliberation about changing states :)
Forgot about bleiben! Interesting thought, that “changing state” and “NOT changing state” belong together–it makes some sense, and will definitely help me remember to use sein as the helper verb with these. Thanks!
Your system is great. It makes it so clear.I’ve never really understood this properly before. Got all of the 12 right. Had to listen really carefully though (and play several of them repeatedly, to be sure!), because the correct answers are only spoken, not given in written form.
Oh right, another old school exercise I have to put into a more normal format :). Thanks for the heads-up and glad you liked it anyway.
Good tutorial. Part about Disney princess underwear is a bit creepy though.
Ich wünschte, ich hätte das nicht gesehen.
The system is good i think. I got all of them correct in the sense that i used the correct forms (wäre gewesen or gewusst hätte etc) but made mistakes with some of the other vocab like i used “geklungen” instead of geklingelt” – but that wasn’t the main focus of the exercise – so I really think at least as far as the grammar goes you explained this very well!
I’m happy to hear that!!
Guten Abend! Continuing with my revision of everything on your website (!!) I had a few questions about the conditional form that are really just loose ends, so feel free to tell me to not worry about them.
We have the normal past tense and its conditional form:
Ich habe ein Buch gelesen; Ich hätte ein Buch gelesen.
What I call the ‘normal’ past tense = Perfekt in the text books. There is also a Plusquamperfekt – which I call the past-past.
Ich hatte ein Buch gelesen.
Is there a conditional form of this? I have been pondering this for quite a while, as in English we often dont distinguish normal past from past-past very well for some types of expressions, such as conditional, but it is still possible – compare:
He might have had to have a long stick
He might have had to have had a long stick
or, to avoid haben as the action verb:
He could have opened it (then).
He could have had opened it (before then).
I think most English speakers would just leave out the ‘had’ though.
There seem to be 3 options:
As I said, feel free to not answer if its not something to worry about. Its actually quite hard to form this in English and most people wouldn’t anyway.
Second question – more of an observation. In English we sometimes used “I would” in the real past (eg When I used to visit my grandma, I would bring her flowers.) I assume this is not a conditional form at all, so we would never use würde for this. (And in fact must use the past tense – Wenn ich früher meine Oma besucht habe, brachte ich ihr Blumen mit. – and not with hätte either!)
Many thanks!
Very nice questions.
I’ll answer the second one first because it’s quicker.
The habitual English “would”
As you said, German would NOT use “würde” in this context and it would sound SUPER confusing, because you#re actually trying to talk about a fact but you’re using a “non-fact” marker.
The most common way to express this is using “immer”
And now the other question:
Is the a Conditional of Plusquamperfect?
My answer to that is yes, but you’re not going to see it often.
If we deconstruct the plusquamperfect by using the spoken past scheme we get this:
No one says that, but from here it’s easy to find the conditional.
Semantically, this means something like “Had the conditions in the past been different, there would have been a moment in the past, at which I would have already eaten a pizza.”
Using the normal past conditional is not the same, in this case, but that’s a context issue.
Here’s the same scheme for “sein”.
I didn’t check what the other two sources are saying. German for English speakers is a pretty reliable source, I’d say, but that other one is… meh. I don’t think whoever has written the content there really knows what they’re talking about. They just read some other articles online and then paraphrase it.
Thank you so much! I do try to find answers myself first, but I always find your explanations so simple and eloquent. And helpful!
By the way… your comment made me aware that the layout was broken here. I fixed it now. If you see stuff like this elsewhere, please let me know :)
Not sure what you mean by broken, but 2 or 3 days ago your whole website was appearing weird for me (almost like a text only version) but I thought it might just be me, in any case it fixed itself.
But related to this unrelated point – I thought there used to be a button (like a cog wheel near the top of the comments section?) to be able see all of my previous comments on posts, but I dont see that anymore. Or am I going insane? Sometimes my real past and unreal past feel are equally doubtful….
This button definitely did exist, not sure why it’s not showing up. I’ll have to investigate.
The html thing you saw was some server issue but that should be fixed :)
I think the layout is messed up again. When I press the button to reveal the answer for the quiz questions, nothing shows up :(
Oh, thanks!! I did an update recently, but that messed up some of the code. Should be fixed now!
Alles ist jetzt in Ordnung, danke :D
Ausgezeichnete Erklaerung! Vielen Dank!
Super Method!
Koenntest du bitte erklaeren—Mit der N. 5, auf Englisch:
If I had known that the exam was so difficult
ist das moeglich: wenn ich gewuesst haette, dass die Pruefung so schwer war oder waere?
Danke sehr!
“war” implies that the exam is already in the past in the moment in which you’d like to have known it.
Monday: Exam (is difficult)
Tuesday: You didn’t know it was difficult
Wednesday: You say the sentence referring to Tuesday
With “wäre” it sounds weird and I can’t think of a context which would specifically ask for this phrasing.
Maybe I’m mistaken but I don’t think you’d ever say in English: “If I had known that the exam IS so difficult, I would have prepared myself better.” Unless you were maybe whispering to a classmate at the moment you’re taking the exam. But even for me as a native English speaker this sounds weird and I’d always use ”was”, instead of “is”. Does German use “is” in this case, and “was” refers only specifically to past events?
German would 100% use “ist” in the context you described and even if the person says it in a cafeteria afterwards.
That’s a core difference in tense use between German and English.
When German does reported speech or though, it’ll jump “into the moment”.
It’s not just for conditional either.
The second part is in present because she was tired at the moment of saying it.
Hope that helps :)
Thanks :)
Thanks!
Ich hätte schon lange deutsch gelernt, wenn ich es vor 2 oder 3 Jahren angefangen hätte? I would have already learned German if I had started 2 or 3 years ago. Not sure if it is right(
Better to switch the order a bit
– Ich hätte Deutsch schon lange gelernt…
The way you phrased it sounds like “Deutsch lernen” is the general activity and you would have started that long ago (without implication of finishing). My version implies completion.
Wonderful piece, again! Thank you!
Okay so I have a question about no.9. Would that be right if I formulated the sentence like this?
“Thomas hätte Fleisch gegessen, wenn Maria dagegen gewesen wäre.”
And… another question.. What happened to the search bar? It was a good friend of mine.
Actually, I removed it, because I want to hock it to the dictionary I am building. The results were really subpar anyway.
For vocab, I suggest the dictionary on the site (you can find it in the menu).
And for grammar, you can just browse the topics.
I’ll put up the icon once it’s hooked to my dictionary database :).
As for the question… your version is grammatically correct, just the meaning is different. But it’s nothing particular to German. Not sure what you’re wondering about, actually :)
I didnt know how to translate directly from that English sentence so I translated with “dagegen” instead then I could not tell if it is also true… Somehow sounded wrong, but then again not surprised that it can work…
Thanks for the explanation!
Oh man… I just now noticed the different phrasing :D! Seriously, the only difference I saw was the missing “nicht” in your sentence. So yeah… your sentence works perfectly except that you’re missing the negation. You’re saying he would have done it had she been against it. Like… just to spite her.
Yay! Almost feeling boss after this lesson. But what about ‘haette haette Fahrradkette’ – what does it mean?
It’s a bit like “coulda shoulda woulda”. So it expresses that talking about what you could have done or what could have happened ultimately doesn’t matter.
A politician once said it during and interview and it’s a commonly known expression ever since (might have been before, but I know it because of him).
Is it just me or does it *really* sound like Emanuel says “Ich hätte ein schön Abend gehabt” (instead of “einen schönen“). I was confused by the audio till I looked at the written answer, then I proceeded to step 4!
Nah, it’s not just you. Spoken German tends to swallow these endings. I hear an ever so slight difference but that might just be in my head :)
Amazing, man! Love your style of teaching and the systems you show! Keep on rock n rolling
Glad you like it :))!!
If my alarm had rang, I wouldn’t have slept so long.
Here you are using the simple past ‘rang’
Should be the past participle ‘rung’. As in the other examples.
Unless it’s an Americanism I am not aware of…eg Honey, I shrunk the kids…a reverse example :)
Hmm, I did a quick check on Google and I did find a lot of instances for “had rang”. But there are twice as many for “had rung” , so yeah, it’s definitely the more correct version.
Hopefully, an American reads this and can say whether I got it from Youtube :D
Hi, just a general question about “sein”, why is “sind” used when it is the only verb but when there is a helper, it becomes “sein”.
Can you give me an example, please?
Cold beer would be been better .. makes much more sense than “cold beer would have been better”. You can’t *have* being. You can only *be* being. German logic +1
Offf… I never thought of it this way :). Maybe it’s more logical but at the same time it sounds REALLY weird in English :D
THe practample doesnt work rn.
Ive been using reverso to verify answers, but I do not know for certain.
The audio at least should work. Anyway, I programmed this myself but I switched to a new setup. I think I have messed up some function calls and now it’s not backward compatible :). I’ll check it once I’m done with all the comments on the new article :)
Should work now, but you need to click/tap twice to make it show :/