Have you ever hosted a dinner party where absolutely everything went wrong? To express regrets or talk about situations that never happened, German uses the past tense of the Konjunktiv II.
To form this, use the Konjunktiv II form of haben (hätte) or sein (wäre) alongside the past participle of your main verb. The past participle goes at the very end of the sentence.
Just like in the regular conversational past (Perfekt), use wäre for verbs indicating a change of state or motion (and the verb sein itself), and hätte for almost everything else.
| Without me, the dinner would not have been a disaster. | Ohne mich wäre das Abendessen keine Katastrophe gewesen. |
| A good host would have cooked something else. | Ein guter Gastgeber hätte etwas anderes gekocht. |
If-Clauses (Wenn-Sätze)
When you want to describe what would have happened if a certain condition had been met, use the conjunction wenn (if).
Because wenn is a subordinating conjunction, it sends the conjugated verb (hätte or wäre) to the very end of the clause, right after the past participle.
| If the meat had not burned, there would not have been any smoke. | Wenn das Fleisch nicht angebrannt wäre, hätte es keinen Rauch gegeben. |
If you start the entire sentence with a wenn clause, the main clause that follows it must immediately start with its conjugated verb (which will also be hätte or wäre).
| If the host had not oversalted the appetizer, we would have eaten it. | Wenn der Gastgeber die Vorspeise nicht versalzen hätte, hätten wir sie gegessen. |
Reflexive Verbs
This structure works seamlessly with reflexive verbs. The reflexive pronoun stays near the beginning of the clause, while the past participle and auxiliary verb move to the end.
| I would have been ashamed if I had forgotten the dessert. | Ich hätte mich geschämt, wenn ich den Nachtisch vergessen hätte. |
| Would you have been annoyed if you had spilled the wine? | Hättest du dich geärgert, wenn du den Wein verschüttet hättest? |