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Question

What is the conditional tense used for

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

There are conditional sentences, but no "conditional tense."

CalifJim · Answer

anonymous
What is the conditional tense used for?

The only "conditional tense" we have in English is the construction we use to translate the conditional tense in the Romance languages, which do have a conditional tense. We don't call it a tense, except maybe a "modal tense". It's the word would followed by an infinitive without 'to'.

would go, would see, would do, would think, ...

The past is would have followed by a past participle.

would have gone, would have seen, ...

There are many different uses of these constructions, the most important of which are to form the so-called second and third conditionals. You can search this site or others to find vast amounts of information on these constructions.

CJ

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