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 :)
How to build it – Basics
We’ve learned that for the non-past conditional there are two versions for each verb, and the choice which one to pick depends on what’s idiomatic for that verb (or the verb in context).
The Past Conditional is more straight forward because there is only one version. Hooray!
Here’s my four step guide on how to build it.
Step 1:
Find the actual verb is and then ignore the wording in English.
You absolutely MUST build it from scratch in German.
Step 2:
Take the verb (action) in German and build the Spoken Past of it.
Step 3: Replace the helper verb of the spoken past with its real conditional form.
Step 4: Feel like a boss, because you’re crushing it at German
Step four is actually kind of optional and you will be understood without it. But it feels REALLY good.
Anyway, let’s go over it together. Here’s our sentence.
- I would have said something.
Did your zealous head just pull out a würde? Then stop right now. We really need to follow the guide, even if you think you know better.
So, Step one is to identify the actual verb. Here, it is to say. Yes, there’s also would and have in there but those are just helping, the action we’re talking about is saying something. Cool, so now we need to ignore the English sentence completely.
Actually, let’s just build a basic sentence with that. You don’t have to do that every time, but it’s a step that can be very helpful whenever you have a longer sentence and you’re getting confused.
- Ich sage etwas.
I say something.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the same as the original. But has the same elements, except that we’re not using Past Conditional.
Now, for step 2, let’s take that and put it into spoken past.
- Ich habe etwas gesagt.
And step 3 says, we need to replace the helper verb with its real conditional form.
- Ich hätte etwas gesagt.
And that is it. We’ve built our first real conditional together. Time for step four
- *feels like a boss
Ah, so good.
Let’s do another one, this time with a verb that uses sein for the spoken past.
- I would have come earlier.
What’s the actual verb? Exactly, kommen. So the most basic sentence with the same elements would be
- Ich komme früher.
Now the same in spoken past:
- Ich bin früher gekommen.
And now we’ll replace the helper (bin) with its real conditional form.
- Ich wäre früher gekommen.
And boom. Done!!! Easy.
And it’s exactly the same for those infamous Avaté-sentences. That’s short for “all-verbs-at-the-énd”. Their real name is subordinate clause, but Avaté sounds much cooler. And more spiritual. Like, it’s a Yoga style. Namastayyy, beautiful beings, I am so sooo happy we’re about to share this Avate-Yoga session with one another. Here’s our first pose, please join along and follow my steps.
- …, if you had called me.
What’s the verb here? Exactly – to call. So the most basic Avate-form of this sentence would be this
- …, wenn du mich anrufst.
Now let’s put that into spoken past.
- …, (wenn) du mich angerufen hast.
(wenn should be als here, but we’re only doing this for the verb)
And now let’s replace the helper verb with it’s real conditional.
- …, wenn du mich angerufen hättest.
Yeah… as you can hear, I integrated step 4 in the audio already.
Anyway, let’s do one more together…
- If I had fallen asleep, my steak would have burned.
Phew, this already starts to look scary, but if we just stick to the system, we’ll be fine.
- Wenn ich einschlafe , verbrennt mein Steak. (most basic version)
- ((Wenn)) ich eingeschlafen bin , ist mein Steak verbrannt. (spoken past)
- Wenn ich eingeschlafen wäre , wäre mein Steak verbrannt. (replace helper with its real conditional)
Tadah!! The only thing that’s probably a little confusing is that verbrennen builds its spoken past with sein. Like…. what the hell?
But you have to remember… the main point for the use of sein is not that there’s movement. The main point is that something or someone changes their location or state. Like, from raw to burned.
Anyway, so that’s the basic system.
Let’s look at a few practamples®… that’s basically examples that are also a practice. Just try to express the English version in German.
Wenn Maria das gesehen hätte, hätte sie gelacht.
Wenn Thomas mit mir geredet hätte, wäre ich eingeschlafen.
Wenn mein Wecker geklingelt hätte, hätte ich nicht so lange geschlafen.
Ohne dich wäre meine schlechte Laune nicht weggegangen.
Wenn ich gewusst hätte, dass die Prüfung so schwer ist, hätte ich mich besser vorbereitet.
If you messed up with the word order, don’t worry too much. That’s normal. What matters most is that you have the right forms. Or that you understand why I am using the forms I am using.
Cool… so now that we know the basic system, let’s start looking at the trickier stuff.
Where it gets tricky
Take this sentence.
- Cold beer would have been better.
Doesn’t look very complicated and yet, many learners get stuck when they try to say it in German. And even with our three step system it is a bit… tricky.
The reason for that is the verb sein. More precisely, the fact that we’re used to using the written past (preterit) for sein. You see, the second step was to make the sentence in “normal” past tense; so without a Conditional. In case of sein, we’d naturally do it this way:
- Kaltes Bier war besser.
Cold beer was better.
And that’s perfectly idiomatic, but … for building the Past Conditional, it is a dead end. We MUST use the Spoken Past. And yes, it does exist. Here’s it is:
- Kaltes Bier ist besser gewesen.
Cold beer was better.
You might have never seen this, it’s not very idiomatic, but it does exist. And for the Past Conditional it is super mega uber turbo helpful, because now, all we have to do is replace the helper verb (ist) with its Real Conditional form and we’re flippin’ done.
- Kaltes Bier wäre besser gewesen.
Cold beer would have been better.
And that’s it. That is would have been. No need to fiddle around with würde and haben and then abort the mission because our sentence is already a disaster. All we had to do, was follow our step by step guide. That’s the challenge here, actually.
To REALLY, blindly follow the steps. What were the steps again? Well, here are the ones that actually matter:
- build sentence in spoken past
- replace helper with its real conditional form
And if it says “build spoken past” we’ll do that. Like a dumb computer pretty much. Like… Alexa, use spoken past of sein!
“I’m sorry, but Spoken Past is not an official grammatical term. If you are referring to the Perfekt, then I must inform you that it is not idio…”
Aw, screw that. Stupid AI. Thinks it’s so smart.
“Your new order for Disney Princess underwear is being shipped, Emanue…. “
SHUT UP!!! That is nobody’s business. And… it’s … a present.
Anyways… where were we… oh yeah… so sein is of course not the only verb for which we’re not used to building the spoken past. So let’s look at a couple more examples.
- I would have had more time.
(Ich habe mehr Zeit gehabt …. spoken past, our stepping stone) - Ich hätte mehr Zeit gehabt.
- Maria would have become super strong.
(Maria ist super stark geworden… spoken past, our stepping stone) - Maria wäre super stark geworden.
Tadah. I know, it’s not the most intuitive, but it’s straight forward and it works.
And it also works for the Avaté-sentences…
- I am sure that the unicorn would have wanted it that way.
Unless you’re a C1-fluency machine, a sentence like this one probably makes you feel confused. Like… where to start? Where to end?With what verb? In what form?
But if we stick with the steps, it’s not a problem at all.
- Ich bin mir sicher, dass das Einhorn es so will.
- Ich bin mir sicher, dass das Einhorn es so gewollt hat. (spoken past)
- Ich bin mir sicher, dass das Einhorn es so gewollt hätte. (what we want)
Now some of you might be like
“Emanuel, what if there’s another verb with the modal verb… like what if the unicorn would have wanted to do it that way?”
Well, that is exactly, where things get really messy. And that’s what we’ll talk about in the next part of the series, called:
Past Conditional – Word Order-Ception (link follows as soon as the article is ready)
But of course we’re not gonna wrap up this one without a quick second round of Practamples ®… this time, with some modals and stuff in there. They do look scary, I know, but if you just follow the steps, you’ll get them right. Seriously… the main reason people get it wrong is that they just try building Past Conditional without following a system, when they’re actually not ready for that yet. You need to slow down, guys :).
Of course, you can’t follow a step by step guide in conversation. It’s just a way to get used to how the structures sound and feel in German, forget about English and get a sense of “I’m smart enough for that stuff.”. The rest comes with practice.
Anyway, so let’s do this. Viel Erfolg :)
Wenn ich das gewusst hätte, wäre ich pünktlich gewesen.
Wenn ich einen Führerschein gehabt hätte, hätte ich ein Auto gemietet.
Wenn Thomas ihren Jahrestag vergessen hätte, wäre Maria sehr enttäuscht gewesen.
Thomas hätte Fleisch gegessen, wenn Maria nicht nein gesagt hätte.
Wenn die Suppe richtig heiß gewesen wäre, wäre sie noch besser gewesen.
Ich hätte es gemacht, wenn ich genug Zeit gehabt hätte.
Ich hätte einen schönen Abend gehabt, wenn ich nicht in die Oper gegangen wäre.
And, how was it? Did the system work for you? If not, where did you make mistakes? Let me know in the comments below how you did and how many you got right. And of course, if you have any questions about any of this let’s talk about it in the comments.
Have a great week and see you next time.
Do you want to read on? Then click right here to get to the next part right away:
Conditional in German 5 – Past Conditional 2
Ps.: Apologies for the weak audio. The noise filter setting I used this time weren’t the best :/.
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
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 :/