konditionales

Konditionales is a term used in linguistics to describe grammatical constructions that express a condition and a consequence. The plural form is often used to refer to conditional clauses (konditionalsätze) or to the conditional mood across languages. They are a central feature for expressing hypothetical situations, possibilities, politeness, or reported speech.

In German, Konditionalsätze are subordinate clauses that state a condition, usually introduced by wenn, falls or sofern. The main clause states the result. When the condition is unreal or unlikely, the verb in the subordinate clause commonly uses the Konjunktiv II, and the main clause may use a würden construction or other subjunctive endings. Examples include: Wenn ich Zeit hätte, würde ich ins Kino gehen. Falls du mir helfen wolltest, wäre ich dir dankbar. These clauses can also be formed with different tenses to express various temporal relations.

In other languages, the term Konditional or conditionnel refers to a dedicated conditional mood used to mark actions dependent on a condition. French uses the conditionnel présent or passé; Spanish and Italian use similar conditional forms, typically with distinct endings attached to the infinitive stem (for example, parlerais in French, hablaría in Spanish, parlerei in Italian). These forms commonly express hypothetical outcomes, polite requests or statements about potential past events.

Konditionals differ from related grammatical structures such as the subjunctive or future tense, depending on the language’s system. Some languages use a mood (conditional) as a primary category, while others treat conditionals as a syntactic combination of clauses. Overall, konditionales are a fundamental tool for encoding dependency between conditions and results across many linguistic traditions.