Breakdown of Da je savjetnik predvidio krizu, mi bismo bili izbjegli krah.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
mi
we
kriza
crisis
da
if (in counterfactual conditionals)
Questions & Answers about Da je savjetnik predvidio krizu, mi bismo bili izbjegli krah.
How do you form the past conditional seen in bismo bili izbjegli?
The past conditional (Kondicional prošli) is built with three parts: the aorist of biti (here, bismo for "we"), the past participle of biti (here, bili), and the past participle of the main verb (here, izbjegli). It translates exactly to "would have avoided".
Could I just say mi bismo izbjegli krah instead of using the three-part past conditional?
Yes. In everyday speech, Croatians almost always use the present conditional (bismo izbjegli) to express "would have avoided" because the past context is already obvious from the Da clause. The full past conditional (bismo bili izbjegli) is mostly reserved for formal writing or literature.
Why does the "if" clause use the perfect tense (Da je savjetnik predvidio) instead of a conditional?
In Croatian past counterfactuals ("If X had happened..."), the "if" clause always uses Da followed by the perfect tense (or sometimes the pluperfect). You never put the conditional form (bi/bismo) inside the Da clause itself; the conditional belongs only in the main clause.
What kind of "collapse" does krah refer to?