Learn Polish: Jeśli jutro będzie padać, będzie nam zimno. - If it rains tomorrow, we will be cold.

In English, we use the present tense after "if" when talking about the future ("If it rains tomorrow"). Polish is more strictly logical: if the condition is going to happen in the future, you must use the future tense after jeśli. So, the Polish sentence literally says "If it will rain tomorrow...".

Can I use jeżeli instead of jeśli at the start of this sentence?

Yes, absolutely! Jeśli and jeżeli both mean "if" and are completely interchangeable in conditional sentences like this one. Jeśli is just a little shorter and slightly more common in everyday spoken Polish.

Why is the word for "we" (nam) in the dative case here? Why not just use my?

In Polish, physical sensations like being cold, warm, or comfortable are expressed using the verb "to be" plus a pronoun in the dative case (the "to whom" case) and an adverb. Nam means "to us". Literally, the second half of the sentence translates to "it will be cold to us". If you used the basic pronoun and said my będziemy zimni, it would mean your bodies are physically cold to the touch!

I've learned to form the future tense using past-tense verb endings. Could I say będzie padało instead of będzie padać?