Breakdown of À condition que tu aides, tu peux utiliser le barbecue.
tu
you (informal singular)
aider
to help
pouvoir
to be able to / can
utiliser
to use
à condition que
provided that
le barbecue
the barbecue
Questions & Answers about À condition que tu aides, tu peux utiliser le barbecue.
Is aides in the present indicative or the subjunctive?
It is in the subjunctive! The expression à condition que (provided that / on the condition that) always triggers the subjunctive mood. However, because aider is a regular -er verb, its present subjunctive form (tu aides) looks exactly identical to its present indicative form.
Since the subject is tu in both halves of the sentence, could we use an infinitive here instead?
Yes, and it would sound very natural! When the subject of the condition is the same as the subject of the main clause, French speakers often prefer to use à condition de followed by an infinitive. You could easily rewrite this as: À condition d'aider, tu peux utiliser le barbecue.
Why isn't there an object after aides? Don't you have to say who you are helping?
Not necessarily. Just like in English, aider can be used on its own without a direct object to mean "to pitch in" or "to give a hand" in a general sense. If you did want to specify who is being helped, you would add a direct object pronoun (for example, à condition que tu nous aides for "provided you help us").
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