The conditional tense is used to descibe a situation in the future that may or may not happen. For example:
If I were rich, I would buy a big house
I could go to the cinema later
The conditional tense is easy to form using the verb stem from the future tense, and the verb endings from the imperfect tense. Let's remind ourselves of what they are.
Future Stems
For regular verbs the future stem is relatively straightforward. for -er verbs and -ir verbs the future stem is simply the infinitive of the verb. For -re verbs we remove the final r and that is the future stem. However there are a few irregular verbs, for which the stem must be memorised.
Example:
Verb Stem
Manger manger-
Finir finir-
Prendre prendr-
être ser-
Avoir aur-
Faire fer-
As you can see a lot of irregular verbs are the most common so they must be learnt.
Imperfect endings
The imperfect endings are as follows:
je -ais
tu -ais
il/elle -ait
nous -ions
vous -iez
ils/elles -aient
We will now put these together to form the conditional
Conditional Tense
Je regarderais I would watch
Tu finirais You would finish
Il prendrait He would take
Nous serions We would be
Vous auriez You would have
Ils feraient They would do
As seen above the imperfect ending is simply added to the future stem to form the conditional tense.