“I would” in Spanish

I would like…, I would say…. Would you want…. Would you give? How do you form these sentences in Spanish. Real easy: the conditional tense!

The conditional tense (also known as the Potential simple) is used to describe actions that would happen. This is the same as in English when the word would is used (I would eat). The difference in Spanish is that the verb conjugation reflects this meaning directly, rather than adding an additional word. Overall, the usage of the conditional tense is very similar to English.

Conditional tense for regular Spanish verbs:

To form the conditional simple you change the ending of the stem of the Spanish verb. All regular verbs have the same ending:

For a -AR verb:
yo stem + aría
stem + arías
él stem + aría
nosotros stem + aríamos
vosotros stem + aríais
ellos stem + arían

For a -ER verb:
yo stem + ería
stem + erías
él stem + ería
nosotros stem + eríamos
vosotros stem + eríais
ellos stem + erían

For a -IR verb:
yo stem + iría
stem + irías
él stem + iría
nosotros stem + iríamos
vosotros stem + iríais
ellos stem + irían

Examples

To see if you got it right. Try to conjugate the following verbs into a I would sentence:

Questions:

  1. ___________________ (compartir – ustedes)
  2. ___________________ (comprar – yo)
  3. ___________________ (comer – el)
  4. ___________________ {vivir – ellos)
  5. ___________________ (caminar – nosotros)
  6. ___________________ (beber – yo}
  7. ___________________ (abrir – tu)
  8. ___________________ (tomar – ellos)
  9. ___________________ (tocar – tu)

Answers:

  1. Compartirían
  2. Compraría
  3. Comería
  4. Vivirían
  5. Caminaríamos
  6. Bebería
  7. Abrirías
  8. Tomarían
  9. Tocarías

That should go pretty easy using the conjugation chart above. That is because these are all regular verbs in Spanish. However, there are also a lot of irregular verbs some of which are extremely helpful to learn in the Condicional simple tense. Let’s try with these irregular verbs:

  1. __________________ (estar – nosotros)
  2. __________________ (quierer – yo)
  3. __________________ (estar – el)
  4. __________________ (poder – ellos)
  5. __________________ (tener – yo)
  6. __________________ (haber – ellos)
  7. __________________ (venir – tu}
  8. __________________ (decor – yo)
  9. __________________ (hacer – nosotros)

Send me an e-mail if you would like to have the correct answers: hello [@] howismyspanish.com

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