Contrary-to-Fact Conditionals (Present)

A present contrary-to-fact conditional describes a situation that is hypothetical, unlikely, or simply untrue right now. "If I had money, I'd buy a house" — but I don't have money, so the house stays imaginary. "If I were you, I wouldn't do that" — but I'm not you. These sentences live in an unreal present, and Brazilian Portuguese marks that unreality with a specific verb pairing: se + imperfect subjunctive + conditional. There is also a hallmark of natural Brazilian speech you must recognize: in conversation, the conditional in the main clause is freely replaced by the imperfect indicative.

The core frame

The standard, register-neutral pattern is:

se + imperfect subjunctive → conditional

The se-clause carries the hypothesis in the imperfect subjunctive (tivesse, fosse, pudesse), and the main clause carries the consequence in the conditional (compraria, faria, iria).

The imperfect subjunctive in the se-clause

The se-clause always takes the imperfect subjunctive — this never changes, in any register. It is the one fixed point in the whole construction. The imperfect subjunctive is built from the third-person plural preterite (drop -ram, add -sse endings):

The Brazilian colloquial swap: conditional → imperfect indicative

Here is the feature that makes Brazilian speech sound Brazilian. In everyday conversation, Brazilians very commonly replace the conditional in the main clause with the imperfect indicative. So alongside the formal compraria, you hear the colloquial comprava — and both are fully accepted in speech.

The critical thing to internalize: only the main clause can swap. The se-clause stays in the imperfect subjunctive no matter how casual the speech. You will hear Se eu tivesse... eu comprava (subjunctive in the se-clause, indicative in the main clause), but never Se eu tinha... eu comprava in standard Brazilian — putting the plain imperfect indicative tinha in the se-clause is an error, not a register choice.

The fixed phrase: se eu fosse você

The single most common present counterfactual in Brazilian Portuguese is se eu fosse você ("if I were you"), used to give advice. It is so frequent it behaves almost like a set phrase. Both the conditional and the colloquial imperfect indicative appear after it:

Note that English uses the special form "were" (if I *were you, not *was) for exactly this counterfactual meaning. Portuguese fosse is the precise equivalent: a dedicated subjunctive form that signals unreality.

How English handles present counterfactuals

English builds present counterfactuals with simple past in the if-clause + "would" in the main clause: "If I had money, I would buy a house." Map this directly:

The English "past" form (had, were) corresponds to the Portuguese imperfect subjunctive, and English "would + verb" corresponds to the Portuguese conditional — with the option of relaxing to the imperfect indicative in casual Brazilian. The structural match is clean; the trap is forgetting that Portuguese needs a true subjunctive (tivesse) where English just uses a past tense (had).

Common Mistakes

The pattern behind every one of these errors is the same: putting a conditional or a plain indicative into the se-clause where the imperfect subjunctive belongs. Lock down the se-clause first, then choose your main-clause register.

Key Takeaways

• Present counterfactuals describe situations that are untrue now.
• The frame is se + imperfect subjunctive → conditional: Se eu tivesse..., compraria.
• In colloquial Brazilian speech, the main-clause conditional freely relaxes to the imperfect indicative: comprava for compraria. Both are accepted.
• The se-clause always stays in the imperfect subjunctive (tivesse, fosse, pudesse) — never the conditional, never the plain imperfect indicative.
• Se eu fosse você ("if I were you") is the everyday advice formula and mirrors English "were."