Potencial

¿Podrías llamarme?

Potencial expresses conditional events or a polite treatment. It’s equivalent to the English would + verb construction.

Yo hablaría con el profesor – I would talk to the teacher

¿Me ayudarías? – Would you help me?

Yo en tu lugar abriría una agencia de viajes – In your place I would open a travel agency

¿Me traería usted unos cubiertos, por favor? – Could you bring me some cutlery, please?

Forms

abrir

yo abriría

tú abrirías

él, ella, usted abriría

nosotros abriríamos

vosotros abriríais

ellos, ellas, ustedes abrirían

It’s very simple to conjugate verbs in Potencial, because you don’t have to cut off the infinitive endings (ar, er, ir). Potencial resembles Futuro Simple. The personal endings are just a little bit different. They are like the Imperfecto endings.

Try it yourself:

hablar

comer

dormir

Yo olvidaría español sin ti – I would forget Spanish without you

¿Adónde viajaríais la próxima vez? – Where would you go next time?

Try it yourself:

We would go to Africa

They would never come back

Could you open the door, please?

I would be more punctual in your place

With verbs in Potencial it’s very convenient to use such phrases as yo en tu lugar or yo que tú, meaning if I were you.

Yo que tú compraría una bicicleta – If I were you, I would buy a bicycle

However, at this point of our Spanish course, we are not able yet to build full conditional sentences with the si (if) conjunction. There is something called Subjuntivo missing, that is applied as the conditional part, the so-called if-clause. We can only build the second (dependent clause) part.

For example, in the sentence If I had a bicycle, I would go to the mountains, we can say only the second part in Spanish.

Si tuviera una bicicleta, yo iría a las montañas

You are not ready yet to comprehend the first part. But very soon we’ll cover this part, as well.

In addition to the main subject, it’s worth mentioning, that in most Spanish grammar books, Potencial is called Condicional Simple. On the pages of this tutorial we will be using it’s second name – Potencial, just for simplicity. This is done in order to avoid confusion, because the word Condicional can be applied not only to the verb forms (compraría, hablarías), but to the entire conditional sentences.

Irregular verbs

Potencial looks like Futuro Simple not only, because the infinitives remain intact, but also because irregular verb stems are absolutely equal.

decir

yo diría

tú dirías

él diría

nosotros diríamos

vosotros diríais

ellos dirían

Compare:

Futuro Simple: yo diré

Potencial: yo diría

These is the list of irregular verbs in Potencial (Condicional Simple), showing only the first person forms. You can easily guess now, what the rest of the forms look like.

tener – yo tendría

poner – yo pondría

hacer – yo haría

venir – yo vendría

salir – yo saldría

poder – yo podría

querer – yo querría

haber – habría

¿Podrías ayudarme? – Could you help me?

En este caso tendríamos más trabajo – In this case we would have more work

Try it yourself:

What would you do in my place?

Could he explain this thing to us?

We would tell it to our parents

She would love you more