| Second Conditional: unreal possibility or dream The second conditional is like the first conditional. We
are still thinking about the future. We are thinking about a particular
condition in the future, and the result of this condition. But there is
not a real possibility that this condition will happen. For example, you
do not have a lottery ticket. Is it possible to win? No! No lottery
ticket, no win! But maybe you will buy a lottery ticket in the future. So you
can think about winning in the future, like a dream. It's not very real, but
it's still possible. | IF | condition | result | | | past simple | WOULD + base verb | | If | I won the lottery | I would buy a car. | Notice that we are thinking about a future condition. We use the
past simple tense to talk about the future condition. We use WOULD + base verb
to talk about the future result. The important thing about the second
conditional is that there is an unreal possibility that the condition will
happen. Here are some more examples: | IF | condition | result | | | past simple | WOULD + base verb | | If | I married Mary | I would be happy. | | If | Ram became rich | she would marry him. | | If | it snowed next July | would you be surprised? | | If | it snowed next July | what would you do? |
| result | IF | condition | | WOULD + base verb | | past simple | | I would be happy | if | I married Mary. | | She would marry Ram | if | he became rich. | | Would you be surprised | if | it snowed next July? | | What would you do | if | it snowed next July? |  | | Sometimes, we use should, could or
might instead of would, for example: If I won a million dollars,
I could stop working. | | Third Conditional
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