écrirais

Écrirais is a French verb form belonging to the verb écrire, functioning as the conditional present for the first and second person singular. In French, the conditional present describes actions that would occur under certain conditions, or it can express wishes, polite requests, or hypothetical situations. Because the endings of conditional present are the same for je and tu in many verbs, écrirais can mean either “I would write” or “you would write,” depending on the context.

Formation and form: The form is built from the verb’s infinitive écri- re with the conditional endings -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. For écrire, the stem remains écrir-, yielding j’écrirais and tu écrirais in the singular, il écrirait in the third person, and so on for the other persons. The ambiguity of écrirais—je ou tu—depends on the subject pronoun or conversational context.

Usage: Écrirais appears in hypothetical constructions (type 2 conditional) and in polite requests or tentative statements. It commonly follows si clauses using imperfect verbs, or appears in main clauses to express what someone would do given a condition. Examples include: “J’écrirais un livre si j’avais le temps,” meaning “I would write a book if I had the time,” and “Si tu écrivais plus souvent, tu t’améliorerais,” meaning “If you wrote more often, you would improve.”

Notes: Like most French conditional forms, écrirais is contrasted with the imperfect and other conditional forms to convey nuance in time and certainty.