Hello and welcome back. This
lesson is all about mixed conditionals. It comes from a
request by three viewers – Przemek, Nihar (from Odisha,
India) and Olivia Ornelas. Before we start, if you want
to request a lesson, just leave a comment. In your
comment, tell me your name and I will mention you in the
video. Alright, so in this lesson, I
will teach you about mixed conditionals in both real and
unreal situations (unreal means imaginary). There are
exercises in this lesson for you to understand and
practice. OK first, let’s
start with the most basic type of conditional – the
real conditional. Take a look at this example:
“If it rains on Saturday, we’ll cancel the picnic.” So
what do you understand by that? Well, you know that
there’s a picnic planned for Saturday, and if it rains, we
cannot go on the picnic, so we’ll cancel it. This is the most common type
of conditional: on the condition side – we call it a
condition clause, you have ‘if’ plus the subject plus
the verb in the present simple tense. So, you have
‘if’ and ‘it rains’ which is present simple. On the result
side (in the result clause), you have ‘subject’ plus
‘will’. So – ‘we’ll cancel’
(or we will cancel) ‘the picnic.’ This is called a
real conditional. It’s also
called the first conditional but the number is not
important – what’s important is that it talks about a real
situation – a situation that is possible. So about mixed conditionals? Well, the term ‘mixed’ just
means that a sentence is in a different form – not the
usual form. So, you could say
“If it rains on Saturday, we’ll have to cancel the
picnic.” (so instead of will
plus the main verb, here you have ‘will have to’) or you
could say “If it rains on Saturday, could you bring
some umbrellas?” or maybe I just saw the weather forecast
on the news and I say “How are we going to have a picnic
if it rains on Saturday?” These are all correct, and
they’re some examples of mixed real conditionals. Remember: we say that they’re
mixed because they’re not in the common form. OK, let’s do a small exercise
with this. Here are some
sentences. But I’ve jumbled
them up. Stop the video, try
to put them in the right order, then play the video
again and check. Alright,
number one is “If you don’t mind, could you speak a
little more slowly, please?” Number two is “If Rob wants
to get into a top university, he needs to work harder.” And
number three is “When you leave the house, remember to
lock the front door.” In
conditional sentences, it’s always OK to put the if-
clause last – if you did that, no problem. OK, notice, in number three –
you have ‘when’ instead of ‘if’. The difference is that
‘if’ means something may happen or it may not happen –
so “If you leave the house,” would mean you may or may not
leave the house. But ‘when’
expresses the idea that you are going to leave the house
(I’m sure), and when you leave the house, remember to
lock the front door. So you
can see here that these are all mixed real conditionals –
they all talk about real situations but they’re in
different forms. Let’s now move on and talk
about unreal conditionals. What do I mean by unreal? Unreal refers to situations
that are imaginary. Take
these two sentences: “If I win the lottery, I will quit
my job.” and “If I won the lottery, I would quit my
job.” You will recognize the
first sentence as a real conditional. So imagine that
I have bought a lottery ticket. And the results are
coming out tomorrow, so I have my fingers crossed, I
hope I win. And if I win,
I’ll go into my boss’s office and say “I quit”. So you have
‘if’ and present simple in the condition, and ‘will’ in
the result. But number two is different. It’s an unreal or an
imaginary situation. You have
‘If’ plus the past tense (“I won the lottery”) in the
condition and ‘would’ instead of ‘will’ in the result. So
it means I have no lottery ticket, but I’m dreaming. I’m
saying “I hate my job. If I
won the lottery someday, I would quit.” This type of
sentence is called the second conditional – it talks about
an imaginary situation in the future (like in this
sentence) or in the present – for example “If I weren’t so
busy, I would take a vacation.” So it means “I
cannot take a vacation because I am very busy.” Notice that we use ‘were’ in
the second conditional – if the verb is ‘be’ in the
condition clause, we change it to ‘were’ and not ‘was’. That’s just a special grammar
rule with the second conditional. You can also talk about the
past using unreal conditionals. Remember my
lottery ticket? Let’s say I
bought a ticket but I didn’t win. So I might say “Oh! If I
had won the lottery, I would have quit my job.” That means
I bought a ticket, and when the results came out, I
didn’t get it. So I’m
dreaming but about the past this time. Or in this next
example – “If Ramya had told me it was her birthday today,
I would have bought her a present.” What does that
mean? It means it’s Ramya’s
birthday today but she did not tell me and I didn’t
know; so I didn’t buy her a birthday present. But
thinking back to the past I can say “If she had told me,
then I would have got her a present.” This is called the third
conditional – it is an unreal conditional that talks about
the past. You make it with
‘If’ plus the past perfect tense (using had + the verb
in past participle form) in the condition, and ‘would
have’ in the result. OK, now that you know these,
let’s talk about mixed unreal conditionals now. I have some
sentences on the screen. The
conditions are all in place, but the results are all mixed
up. Stop the video, match the
conditions to the results and then play the video and
check. Alright, number one is “If
Rob had worked harder in school, he could have gotten
into a top university.” This
is a third conditional, meaning it’s an unreal
conditional that talks about the past. But notice that
instead of ‘would’ we have ‘could’. You can also use
might here – you can say “he might have gotten into a top
university’. Number two is “If I had won
the lottery, I would be sitting on a beach in Hawaii
right now.” Here, you see
that we have a past condition, “If I had won the
lottery, say, yesterday”, and then we have a present result
– “I would be sitting on a beach in Hawaii right now.” This means I didn’t win the
lottery so I’m not at a beach. So you see that it
starts like a third conditional – past condition,
but then the result part is like a second conditional –
present result. Number three is similar – “If
Renée hadn’t yelled at her boss, she would still have a
job.” So Renée yelled at her
boss and she got fired. So
she doesn’t have a job now. Again, you have a past
condition and a present result. Number four is “If Arjun were
a smart investor, he wouldn’t have bought those worthless
shares.” Notice here that the
condition is in the present – so it says that Arjun is not
a smart investor. And the
result talks about something he did in the past – he
bought worthless shares. Why
did he buy them? Because he’s
just not smart. Sentence number five is
similar – “If I didn’t have so much homework, I wouldn’t
have stayed home. I would’ve
gone to the movies with all my friends.” So it means I
have a lot of homework, so because of that I was not
able to go to the movies – all my friends went, but I
had to stay home and do my homework. And finally number six is “If
I hadn’t lost my passport, I would be going to the
conference in Vienna next week.” So I lost my passport
– that happened in the past. And the result is in the
future – I cannot go to Vienna next week. So these are the most common
types of mixed unreal conditionals. There are some
other combinations but they’re not so common – the
ones that you see on the screen are the most
important. Alright, to close this
lesson, I want to give you some quick advice on learning
and using conditionals. Don’t
focus so much on the words first, second, third and
mixed. They’re useful but you
need to be paying attention to real and unreal. If you’re talking about a
real situation in the present or future, use: If plus the
present simple tense in the condition. In the result, you
can have ‘will’ or you can have other words such as
‘could’, ‘can’, ‘might’, or a question. If you’re talking about an
unreal or imaginary situation, think about the
condition first. Is it
present or future? Then use
the past simple tense. If the
condition talks about something in the past, then
use the past perfect tense. Then, think about the result. If the result is in the
present or future, use ‘would’. If the result is in
the past, use ‘would have’. Alright, that brings us to
the end of this lesson. I
hope you enjoyed it. I will
see you in the next lesson soon.
