Today we’re going to look at CONDITIONAL sentences, and a very common mistake that Israelis often make (because they are translating from Hebrew).
Conditional sentences are those sentences with the word “IF”. The word “conditional” means, that something is dependent on something else.
Let’s take a closer look…
In Hebrew, we might say something like this:
"אם אני אסיים בזמן, אני אפגש אם חברים"
As we can see, in Hebrew both verbs would be in the future tense.
But in English, only one of the actions is in the future tense – the other is in the present tense.
So, that same sentence in English would be:
“If I finish on time, I will meet friends.” (Not: “If I will finish…”)
In English, we use the present tense for the verb in the “IF” clause, (meaning, in the “IF” part of the sentence).
Of course you can also reverse the order of the actions in the sentence, just like you can in Hebrew. For example:
“I will meet friends, if I finish on time.”
But notice, once again the verb in the “IF” part of the sentence is in the present tense.
This difference from Hebrew takes some time to get used to, so keep practicing. It’s important, because we make Conditional sentences like this almost every day.
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I hope today’s post has been helpful. Let us know…
And join us next week for more helpful tips of Mistake-free Mondays.
