Conditional Tense and Contractions

Mastering the American Accent » Conditional Tense and Contractions

Conditional Tense and Contractions

The grammar of the conditional tense requires a lot of small words that you will need to learn to contract. For example, the following sentence which is the conditional past unreal tense contains thirteen short words: “If you had not called me I would not have known about it.” Saying each word separately obviously sounds unnatural and very foreign. Here’s how an American would say that: “If you hadn’t called me, I wouldn’ve known about it.” Instead of “wouldn’t have,” we say, “woudn’ve.” The t of the word not disappears. Or, in more casual situations, the have of would not have sounds like a as in “woudna.”

This grammar point is often difficult for some intermediate students of English. It might also be difficult for some advanced speakers who have learned English informally, just by speaking it in the United States, rather than through classroom study. Producing these conditional sentences quickly and naturally, particularly in the past unreal tense is difficult for many learners of English. If this is your case, make an extra effort to master this grammar point. Repeating the sentences of the following exercises will help you memorize the grammatical patterns. Practice them until you feel proficient using them.

Word Groups for Practice

Let’s start learning to use contractions in the easier part of the conditional past: the “if clause.”

	sounds like:
1. If I had been…	“If I’d been…”
2. If I had not called…	“If I hadn’t called…”
3. If she had seen…	“If she’d seen…”
4. If they had gone...	“If they’d gone…”

Now let’s practice the second half of the past conditional sentence. There are two versions of this type of contraction: standard speech and casual speech.

	sounds like:	casual speech:
1. would have	“would’ve”	“woulda”
2. would not have	“wouldn’ve”	“wouldna“
3. could have	“could’ve”	“coulda”
4. could not have	“couldn’ve”	“couldna”
5. should not have	“shouldn’ve”	“shouldna”

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