Futuro do pretérito (conditional)

What it is

The futuro do pretérito ("future of the past") is the Portuguese conditional: the -ria forms that usually translate English would. Eu faria isso. (I’d do that.) Você poderia me ajudar? (Could you help me?) The name tells you what it does: it looks forward from a point that is not the real present, either a moment in the past or an imagined situation.

You already know a few of these forms as polite set phrases (gostaria, poderia, seria). This topic gives you the whole system and its four main jobs.

How to form it

Take the whole infinitive and add -ia, -íamos or -iam. The endings are the same for -ar, -er and -ir verbs, and they are the same endings as the imperfeito of comer (comia), just attached to the infinitive.

Only the nós form has a written accent: falaríamos, faríamos. Eu, você and a gente share one form, so the subject is usually said: eu falaria, a gente falaria. With object pronouns, Brazilian speech puts them before the verb: Eu te ajudaria, Você me emprestaria o carregador?

Three short stems

These are the same three verbs that shorten in the futuro do presente (farei, direi, trarei), so if you know one tense you know the other. (Pôr gives poria, but most people say colocaria.) Everything else is regular, even verbs that are very irregular elsewhere: ter → teria, vir → viria, ser → seria, ir → iria, poder → poderia, sair → sairia, saber → saberia.

Try a few before reading on:

When to use it

1. Hypotheses and dreams. What would happen in an imagined situation: Com mais tempo, eu aprenderia a tocar violão. Seria ótimo morar perto da praia. No seu lugar, eu não faria isso. (Full if-sentences such as se eu pudesse… come in the next unit.)
2. Politeness. It softens requests, wishes and opinions: Você poderia fechar a porta? Eu gostaria de um suco de caju. Você se importaria de esperar um minuto? Eu diria que sim. Seria melhor esperar.
3. Future in the past. What someone said, promised or thought would happen: Ele disse que ligaria. A gente achava que o show seria cancelado. The tense shifts with the reporting verb: "Vou ligar" → Ele disse que ligaria.
4. Guesses about the past. Quando se mudou para Curitiba, ela teria uns vinte anos. (She must have been about twenty.) News reports also use it for claims nobody has confirmed: Segundo a polícia, o suspeito estaria em Manaus.

What you will hear in speech

In relaxed Brazilian speech the imperfeito often takes over: Eu adorava morar lá (= adoraria), Você podia me ajudar?, Ele disse que ia ligar (ia + infinitive is the usual spoken future in the past). These are normal, not mistakes. The -ria forms sound neutral to careful, and they are what you write. For "I’d like", Brazilians say eu queria or eu gostaria; quereria exists but almost nobody uses it, and eu gostava in this sense sounds European.

Contrasts and traps

• Habitual "would" is the imperfeito. When I was a kid, we would go to the beach every summer = Quando eu era criança, a gente ia à praia todo verão, never iria. Use the conditional only for things that are imagined, polite, or future as seen from the past.
• chegariam vs chegaram. One syllable separates "they would arrive" from "they arrived". The same goes for falariam / falaram, seriam / foram.
• viria vs veria. Viria is from vir (would come); veria is from ver (would see).
• Conditional vs future. Ela disse que viria looks back at a promise; Ela diz que virá (or que vai vir) reports a promise made now.
• No conditional after se. Se eu poderia is wrong: the se-clause takes the imperfect subjunctive (se eu pudesse), which comes in the next unit.

If you speak Spanish

The conditional works almost exactly as in Spanish, uses included: dijo que vendría = disse que viria; tendría unos treinta años = teria uns trinta anos. The traps are in the stems and the accents:

• Portuguese has none of the Spanish short stems tendr-, saldr-, podr-, sabr-, vendr-, pondr-, habr-: teria, sairia, poderia, saberia, viria, poria, haveria.
• Only haría → faria and diría → diria match. Traer is regular in Spanish (traería) but short in Portuguese (traria).
• No accent on -ia: sería → seria, podría → poderia. Only nós has one: seríamos.
• Me gustaría becomes Eu gostaria de, with the person as subject and de before the infinitive; querría becomes eu queria.