If I went into town, I always gave my neighbor a lift.

[Piermo]

Hello, everyone.
I read that there are two conditionals for the past: real and unreal.

Real:
"If I went into town, I always gave my neighbor a lift."

Unreal:
"If he had listened to his mother, he would have applied to medical school."

But when we are writing a story in the past and we want to write something that will happen in the future, how can we phrase a sentence?
Are these sentences correct?


"if she almost lost her head for disappointing her father, what would happen if she lied to him and her mother?"

"He would have felt much better about the first job if he had predicted what a total disaster the second job would be."

Thank you!

 

[Flask]

Are these sentences correct?

"If she almost lost her head for disappointing her father, what would happen if she lied to him and her mother?"

That sentence is fine. The first "if"-clause is what you're calling a "Real" conditional. "If" could be replaced with "Given that" or "In light of the fact that." The second part is a hypothetical conditional about the future.

Here's another way to phrase the sentence: In light of the fact that she was almost beheaded for disappointing her father, what do you think would happen if she lied to both her father and her mother?

"He would have felt much better about the first job if he had predicted what a total disaster the second job would be."

I'd find that sentence much more natural with "had known" than with "had predicted." Otherwise, that sentence if fine, too. It's a normal counterfactual conditional about the past. The time of "would be" is simply later on in the past.

 

[Piermo]

Thank you! I didn't know that you can mix conditionals.

 

[GhotiO |fɪʃ|]

But when we are writing a story in the past and we want to write something that will happen in the future, how can we phrase a sentence?

I'm not a teacher, but the thing that I find interesting about this is that you can't tell from the grammar whether it's the first or the second conditional put in the past. For example:

Two weeks ago, A is deciding whether to take the bus or the train:

• A: If I take the bus tomorrow, it will be cheaper.
  [just by the sentence, we can assume that A probably hasn't made up his mind yet]

Two weeks ago, B has decided to take the train instead of the bus:

• B: If I took the bus tomorrow, it would be cheaper.
  [just by the sentence, we can assume that B has probably decided to take the train]

But if we use these sentences in the past (e.g. in indirect speech), the difference between them is gone!

• Two weeks ago, A said that if he took the bus the next day, it would be cheaper.
• Two weeks ago, B said that if he took the bus the next day, it would be cheaper.