El condicional simple
English 'would' — hablaría, comería, volvería. It is the tense of the polite request at a counter, of advice you give without pushing, of what you would do in somebody else's shoes, and of what somebody promised back when the promise was still in the future. Two pieces of luck: it is built on the whole infinitive, exactly like the futuro you just learned, and its endings are the -ía set you already know from -er and -ir verbs in the imperfecto. Five rows, one ending set for all three verb groups, and the same twelve irregular stems as the futuro — nothing new to memorize.
Endings on the whole infinitive
Nothing gets cut off. Take the infinitive exactly as it comes — hablar, comer, vivir — and hang the endings on the end of it: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -ían. That gives yo hablaría, tú hablarías, él hablaría, nosotros hablaríamos, ustedes hablarían. The other two groups run identically, because one set of endings covers all three: comería, comerías, comería, comeríamos, comerían; viviría, vivirías, viviría, viviríamos, vivirían. Two details to nail now. Every single form carries a written accent on the í — it is not decoration, it is what keeps the í from collapsing into the vowel beside it. And yo and él/ella/usted share a form, exactly as in the imperfecto, so keep the pronoun when context does not settle it: yo volvería and ella volvería are one word apart. The fifth row does its usual double duty — ustedes hablarían and ellos hablarían are the same three syllables, whether you are addressing your cousins or your students.
The irregular stems are the futuro's, unchanged
Twelve verbs refuse to carry the whole infinitive, and they are the same twelve that misbehaved in the futuro — learn the stem once, spend it twice. Five simply drop a vowel: poder → podría, saber → sabría, haber → habría, querer → querría, caber → cabría. Five swap that vowel for a d: poner → pondría, salir → saldría, tener → tendría, venir → vendría, valer → valdría. Two shrink to almost nothing: decir → diría, hacer → haría. The endings never vary — irregularity lives in the stem and nowhere else. Compounds inherit the whole deal, so mantener gives mantendría and componer gives compondría, for free. One spelling trap worth a second look: querría with two r's is 'I would want', while quería with one is 'I wanted' from the imperfecto. Same for habría (would have) against había (there was).
Politeness — the job it does most often
This is the tense of the counter, the taxi and the phone call. ¿Podría ayudarme? ¿Me daría una bolsa, por favor? Me gustaría un cafecito. ¿Le molestaría esperar un momento? Compare the flat present: ¿Me das una bolsa? is perfectly correct and perfectly fine with a friend, and lands blunt on a stranger. Across most of Latin America the polite package has three parts — usted, a conditional, and very often a diminutive on the noun: ¿Me regalaría una bolsita? That verb regalar literally means 'to give as a gift', and in Colombia and much of Mexico it has become the softest possible way to ask for something: ¿Me regala un tinto? Note too that politeness is frequently one-directional. A shopkeeper who has known you since you were small will say tú to you while you answer her with usted, and neither of you is being rude. Start listening for quisiera now — Quisiera un café comes from a tense you have not met yet, and until you do, treat it as a set phrase.
Advice, and putting yourself in someone's place
Conjugate an obligation verb into the conditional and it stops giving orders and starts giving advice. Debes descansar tells someone what to do; Deberías descansar suggests it. Tienes que hablar con él is a push; Tendrías que hablar con él is a nudge. Podrías llamarla hoy offers an idea rather than an instruction. The hypothetical frame that goes with them does not use si at all: Spanish says 'I, in your place'. Yo en tu lugar no diría nada. Yo en su lugar volvería mañana. In everyday speech that shortens to yo que tú — Yo que tú descansaría un poco — which is what you will actually hear in a kitchen. Two more that live here: Sería mejor salir temprano, the impersonal recommendation, and Me encantaría ir a Oaxaca, which is how you accept an invitation warmly without committing to a date.
The future, seen from the past
Last lesson you built Dice que llegará a las ocho — he says he'll arrive at eight. Now push the reporting verb into the past, and the futuro inside slides one step back with it: Dijo que llegaría a las ocho. That is the entire rule, and English does the same thing with 'will' becoming 'would', which makes it one of the easiest things in the language to get right. Pensé que vendrías. Me prometió que volvería pronto. Sabíamos que no cabríamos todos en el carro. Notice which past tense reports the speech: across Latin America it is the plain pretérito — dijo, prometió, contó — not the present perfect. The important thing to hear is that llegaría says nothing about whether he actually arrived. It reports a plan as it stood at the time, and leaves the outcome entirely open.
Guessing about the past
The futuro guesses about right now: ¿Qué hora será? — Serán las tres. The condicional does the same job one step further back, guessing about a moment that has already gone: Serían las tres cuando llegamos a Lima = it must have been around three when we got to Lima. Tendría unos veinte años = he was maybe twenty. Habría unas cien personas en el mercado = there must have been about a hundred people at the market. ¿Cuánto costaría? = I wonder what it cost. English has to reach for 'must have', 'probably' or 'I wonder'; Spanish just moves the tense and says nothing extra. This use is everywhere in ordinary storytelling, and once you notice it you will hear it in every conversation about last night.
With si — and the one shape to avoid
The conditional's most famous partner is the si sentence, and you already own half of it. Si tuviera tiempo, iría contigo — the iría half is exactly what this lesson built; the si half uses a tense that arrives next lesson, so leave it be for now. What you can build today is the real, everyday si: present tense in the si half, futuro or present in the other. Si tengo tiempo, iré contigo. Si llueve, no salimos. And here is the shape to keep out of your mouth: never put a conditional directly after si. Si tendría tiempo and si podría are wrong in every variety of Spanish, and they are the single most recognizable learner error at this level. si takes the present or the past — never -ía.
