Unreal conditions

You already know how to talk about conditions that can still come true: Ako imam vremena, doći ću — If I have time, I'll come. Maybe you will have time, maybe not; the door is open. But a lot of what we say about decisions and regrets is about things that are not true or did not happen: If I had more money…, If I had known…, I would have taken that job…. Serbian marks this with a different word for if.

ako for the possible, da for the unreal

When the condition is contrary to the facts, the if-clause opens with da instead of ako, and the main clause is in the conditional you learned with bih / bi (kupio bih — I would buy). This kind of condition is called an unreal (or irreal) condition.

The last two rows are the heart of this lesson. The if-clause tells you when the unreal thing is: da + present for a situation that is not true now (Da živim na moru… — If I lived by the sea…), da + past tense for something that did not happen (Da sam znao… — If I had known…). The main clause uses the same conditional in both — došao bih can mean I would come or I would have come; the if-clause decides.

Do not use ako for something you know is false. Ako sam znao is not a regret — it means you really do not know whether you knew. For If I had known, say Da sam znao.

The forms: da-clause and conditional side by side

The da-clause is an ordinary past tense (clitic of biti + participle), so sam or je follows da directly. The main clause is the participle plus bih (I) or bi (he, she, it). Both participles agree with the speaker's or the subject's gender.

The conditional clitics are bih (ja), bi (ti), bi (on, ona, ono), bismo (mi), biste (vi), bi (oni). The main clause may also come first: Rekao bih ti da sam znao — I would have told you if I had known.

Saying no: nisam, nije, ne bih, ne bi

Negate each clause the way you already negate its tense. In the past da-clause, sam / je become nisam / nije; in a present da-clause, ne goes before the verb; in the main clause, ne goes before bih / bi, and then ne bih opens the clause.

The past conditional: bio bih rekao

There is also a longer main clause, made by adding the participle of biti: bio bih rekao (man), bila bih rekla (woman), bio bi rekao (he). It stresses that the whole thing is over and can no longer happen. It sounds formal or bookish; in everyday speech people simply say rekao bih for the past too. Recognise it, and use the short form yourself.

Clitic order

• bih / bi stand in second position like every clitic: Ja bih ti rekao, Rekao bih ti, never Bih ti rekao at the start.
• bih / bi come before pronoun clitics and se: kupio bih ga, ne bih se kajao.
• In the da-clause sam / si come right after da, before a pronoun: Da sam ga pitala. But je goes last: Da mu je neko rekao.

Da does not make the next verb a present tense here, the way hoću da idem does. In an unreal condition the tense after da is whatever the meaning needs: present for now, past for then.