Talk:Conditional mood/Archives/2014

Rewrite
The previous page, with two example paradigms from French and Spanish, was not very useful. I have replaced that with a more general discussion of the development of the conditional in Romance. The page is still very stubby, so please contribute. CapnPrep 12:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, let me say a bit more about the tables. There are already Wiki articles about each language explaining how to conjugate the verbs in all tenses and moods. It would not be reasonable to repeat that information here, for every language with a conditional form. This article ought to follow a more general approach. CapnPrep 12:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

In the phrase 'If I gave him money...' gave is not conditional, it is imperfect subjunctive. In the sentence 'If I gave him money, he would buy a house', 'gave' is again imperfect subjunctive and 'would buy' is conditional. The implication here is that I haven't given him any money yet. Similarly, 'If I had enough money(but I haven't) I would buy a car. 'Had' here is clearly not a past tense or a conditional tense. The conditional tense is again 'would buy'.82.0.50.210 (talk) 18:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Examples
This article is confusing to someone who is not familiar with all the grammatical terms like imperfect subjunctive. I came here looking for examples, since I'm learning about this in my French class. Maybe some examples could be added for a few languages. Such as: YtterbiJum (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * English: I would like to watch a movie.
 * French: Je voudrais regarder un film.

Congratulations to Wikipedia
Congratulations are due to Wikipedia for getting the conditional tense right, and using the expression "If I were" and not "If I was". ACEOREVIVED (talk) 14:57, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Conditional tense in English
I have not looked at this article for a very long time, but it must have been edited. I would not, after my last comment on this talk page, wish to note it must have gone downhill. If one types "conditional tense" into the box on the left, one gets redirected here, as if "conditional mood" and "conditional tense" are synonyms. English certainly does have (contrary to what this article says) a conditional tense -  "If it were done" as is used in Macbeth. This article now needs edits. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I had better
How do you see the expression "had better"? Is this also a conditional? --media_lib (talk) 09:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Germanic examples table -- speculative prescription and example don't seem to match
Seems to me that "A modal verb (could, might, would) + infinitive" doesn't match the given example: "If I were to feel ... ." To match the prescribed rule, shouldn't it say, "If I would to feel ..."? Which makes me think that the given rule is wrong, rather than the example. I came to this page to learn about exactly this issue, and so I can't fill in what the rule should be. Anyone? Everything Else Is Taken (talk) 14:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * In the sentence If I felt well, I would sing, it is not If I felt well that contains a verb form in conditional mood but I would sing. Berndf (talk) 11:51, 24 July 2014 (UTC)