Spanish Conditional Endings: One Set on the Full Infinitive

One paradigm for -ar, -er, and -ir

Unlike the present or preterite, the conditional does not split -ar from -er/-ir. Hablar → hablaría/hablarías/…; comer → comería/…; vivir → viviría/…. The Real Academia Española classifies cantaría as an indicative tense used for non-current situations, including hypotheticals and future-in-the-past reports; the full conditional tense guide walks through those uses.

This page is the endings companion to the imperfect endings chart and preterite endings chart. Together they cover the three simple past-ish tenses English speakers confuse most often; the verb tenses chart places conditional beside preterite, imperfect, future, and subjunctive present.

Endings table: hablar, comer, vivir

Every form carries a written accent on í because Spanish tildes hiato sequences (stressed í beside a), the same rule that accents every imperfect -ía form.

Same endings as imperfect -er/-ir, different stem

Tenía and tendría look alike at the tail (-ía) but attach to different bases: imperfect ten- from tener, conditional tendr- shared with the future. Mixing them changes meaning ("I had" vs "I would have"), not politeness alone.

Twelve common verbs use altered stems identical to the future (diría, haría, podría, querría, sabría, cabría, habría, pondría, saldría, valdría, vendría, plus prefixed derivatives). Ser stays regular: sería, serías, sería…