ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the use of conditional in the German grammar. The conditional is primarily used to refer to hypothetical situations and to indicate that something does not correspond to reality. It usually corresponds to English ‘would + verb’. For some common irregular verbs there is an alternative (shorter) form of the Konjunktiv II, which is formed by taking the past tense stem of the verb, which is used in the ich and er/sie/es forms, adding -e (if the stem does not already end in -e) and umlauting the vowel where possible. For regular verbs, there is also a short Konjunktiv II form that looks identical to the simple past tense (e.g. machte, meinte), but this is used much less frequently than the longer form with würde + infinitive. The conditional perfect is used when talking hypothetically about completed actions. It corresponds to English ‘would have’ plus past participle.
