I asked this question at English Language and Usage sites before but I was suggested to ask this question here instead.
I'm learning about conditional sentences now. This is the site that I'm using for reference. http://www.ef.com/english-resources/english-grammar/conditional/
I got confused on how do I write the type 2 conditional sentences if I use the past tense since the beginning.
For example, first, I have this example of the zero conditional sentence.
If I stick my hands on the fire, I will get burn.
Then, if we use the past tense since the beginning, for example, in the narrative story when we tell about something from the past, it'll be like this, won't it?
If I stuck my hands on fire, I would get burn.
But then, what about the type 2 conditional sentences? This is where I got confused. For example.
If I were him, I wouldn't buy that car.
Should we let it as it is or should we change it if we use simple past tense from the beginning?
Best Answer
The first example is of the first conditional (not the zero conditional as you labelled it) - a present tense verb in the subordinate clause (the protasis, the if clause) with a future form in the main clause (the apodosis, the result of the condition):
The next example is of the second conditional - a past tense verb in the subordinate clause and a conditional form (would plus infinitive) in the main clause:
This is also the second conditional:
The past-tense forms used in second conditionals don't represent actual past time. They represent unreal or hypothetical conditions. The hypothetical conditions are, however, imagined as taking place now or in the future, not in the past:
If you were actually writing about a past hypothetical, you wouldn't use the second conditional. Instead you would use the third conditional, which consists of the past perfect in the subordinate clause, followed by the conditional perfect (would have plus a past participle) in the main clause:
However, the nature of the unreal condition expressed by "if I were him" is that if you had been him at the time, you would still be him now. Hence in this case it is equally acceptable to retain the simple past in the if clause - but the main clause must still be in the conditional perfect, giving you a so-called "mixed" conditional:
Past narrative. You asked about how we would refer to conditionals in a story narrated in the past, with reference to this passage:
You're right. We have to account for four situations:
For the fourth case, we again use the second conditional.
Imagine that the story was being narrated in the present tense:
Backshifted for the past-tense narrative, this becomes:
The condition was a first conditional at the time when the man had been making his decisions and facing his dilemma about fur sales. When the story is told in the past tense, the present shifts to the past, the present perfect to the past perfect, and the future to the conditional (or future-in-the-past, which is the same form: would).
Note also these remarks from englishgrammar.org (where the "was" is used to illustrate the fact that when a first conditional is backshifted to a past-time account of a real condition, "was" is correct rather than "were"):