O condicional (futuro do pretérito)
If the future from lesson 20 is 'will', this one is 'would'. Eu falaria com ele = I would speak with him. A gente comeria pizza = we'd eat pizza. Brazilian grammar books call it the futuro do pretérito — the future seen from the past — and it does three jobs: it makes requests polite, it builds hypotheticals, and it reports what somebody said they'd do. The endings ride on the whole infinitive, so there's nothing to memorize per verb family.
Endings — same on every regular verb
Take the FULL infinitive and add -ia, -ia, -íamos, -iam. The accent on -íamos is not optional. falar → eu falaria, você falaria, ele/ela falaria, nós falaríamos, vocês falariam, eles/elas falariam. comer → comeria, comeria, comeríamos, comeriam. partir → partiria, partiria, partiríamos, partiriam. Three families, one set of endings. Note that eu and the third person share a form — eu falaria and ele falaria are identical, and context does the sorting. With a gente you use the singular: a gente comeria. (The tu form falarias exists in books and in the south; with você it's always falaria.)
The same three irregulars as the future
Exactly the three verbs that bent in lesson 20 bend here, in exactly the same way — short stem, normal endings. dizer → diria, diríamos, diriam. fazer → faria, faríamos, fariam. trazer → traria, traríamos, trariam. Everything else is regular, including the verbs that are irregular everywhere else: ser → seria, ter → teria, ir → iria, estar → estaria, ver → veria, dar → daria, poder → poderia.
Polite use — the everyday job
This is what the tense earns its keep doing. Slide a request out of the present and into the condicional and it goes from blunt to gracious. Quero um café → Gostaria de um café, por favor. Você pode me ajudar? → Você poderia me ajudar? Keep the pronoun in front of the verb, Brazilian style: me ajudar, me passar, me dizer — never ajudar-me. In a padaria or a store, though, the form Brazilians reach for most is the imperfeito from lesson 18: Queria um café, por favor. Softer than quero, less starched than gostaria. All three are correct; gostaria is the one for a formal email or a first meeting.
Hypothetical — 'if I had time'
Pair the condicional with se plus a past hypothetical form: Se eu tivesse tempo, iria com você = If I had time, I'd go with you. Se eu pudesse, viajaria hoje. Se eu fosse você, não faria isso = If I were you, I wouldn't do that. Those se forms — tivesse, pudesse, fosse — belong to the imperfeito do subjuntivo, which gets its own lesson later; for now take them as three ready-made chunks. And hear what Brazilians actually say: in speech the main clause often slides into the imperfeito instead. Se eu tivesse tempo, ia com você. Se eu fosse rico, comprava uma casa na praia. Both are accepted, and the second sounds more like a real conversation.
Future-in-the-past
When you report what someone said, the future backs up into the condicional, just like English 'will' → 'would'. Direct: Vou ligar. Reported: Ela disse que ligaria. Direct: Vamos fazer o jantar. Reported: Eles disseram que fariam o jantar. In everyday Brazilian the reported version is just as often Ela disse que ia ligar — same meaning, lighter register. Use ligaria when you're writing; use either when you're talking.
Brazilian everyday: ia + infinitive instead
One habit worth naming out loud: in conversation the full condicional very often gives way to ia + infinitive — that's the imperfeito of ir plus a bare infinitive. Iria comer becomes ia comer. Nós faríamos isso becomes a gente ia fazer isso. Eu diria que sim becomes eu ia dizer que sim. It is not sloppy; it's the normal spoken shape, and you'll hear it from teachers, journalists and grandmothers alike. Keep the -ia condicional for anything written, for polite requests (poderia, gostaria), and for the moment you want to sound careful — that's where dropping it would be noticed.
