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I am reading the grammar book "Practical English Usage" by Michael Swan. In the book it stated when we are not talking about 'unreal' situations, we use the same tenses with if as with other conjunctions.

If you didn't study physics at school, you won't understand this book.

To the best of my knowledge, only type 3 can be used to talk about unreal situations. And in the quote above, it is probably type 1, which the tenses should be present tense and will + infinitive.

My question is: Why shouldn't I use would instead of will, given that would is the past form of will? I used to learn that the "result" part is in future tense. Is it that will a fixed formula which I have to use will regardless of the time I am referring to?

Thanks.

Derrick Tsang
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    Are you asking: if this is type 1, why is the first part past tense? Because you went to school in the past. And you haven't read the book yet, so the second part is in the future. These "three conditionals" taught in ESL classes are a drastic simplification of how native English speakers use conditional sentences. – Peter Shor Jun 04 '16 at 12:53
  • I'm asking why even the sentence is in past tense, the second part (the result) is still will but not would, as the book said we use the past tense to refer to past events even in conditional sentences. – Derrick Tsang Jun 04 '16 at 13:21
  • If the second part were would, it would mean something different. – Peter Shor Jun 04 '16 at 13:22
  • "If you study physics in school, then you will understand this book." "If you do not study physics in school, then you will not understand this book." "If you studied physics in school, you will understand this book." "If you did not study physics in school, you will not understand this book." "Had you studied physics in school, you would understand this book." "Had you not studied physics in school, you would not understand this book." "If you had studied physics in school, you would understand this book." "If you had not studied physics in school, you would not understand this book." Etc. – Mark Hubbard Jun 04 '16 at 13:54
  • You wouldn't use would because it doesn't mean the same thing if you did. English has no such rules as you here seem to imagine (and which I'm sure you've been taught — but those teachers were wrong I’m sorry to report), just hundreds of combinations with most meaning something slightly different. As @PeterShor observes, the many ways native speakers compose conditional constructs in English is a far cry from the dangerously simplistic (non-)“rules” used in fast-tracked ESL courses. – tchrist Jun 04 '16 at 15:37
  • It's not a counterfactual sentence. We use past tenses to refer to present events in *counterfactual* conditional sentences, which are usually characterized by having a would in the main clause. The grammar of realis conditional sentences is different from the grammar of counterfactual ones, so the rule doesn't apply. – Peter Shor Jun 04 '16 at 16:47
  • What ESL teachers have done is taken the two most common counterfactual conditional tense sequences and called them type 2 and type 3, and the two most common realis conditional tense sequences and called them type 0 and type 1. They then teach that these are the only possibilities, and they *completely ignore* all the less common conditional tense sequences, the grammar and meaning of which can be figured out by (a) figuring out whether it's counterfactual or realis and (b) realizing that the actual meaning of a tense only depends on whether the sentence is counterfactual or realis. – Peter Shor Jun 04 '16 at 16:48
  • Thanks for all of your kind answers. It was you guys making me realize that the grammar of conditional sentences is soooooooo complicated. Now I wouldn't anymore limit myself to the 4 types I have learnt, thank you very much! – Derrick Tsang Jun 05 '16 at 03:34
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    I’m voting to close this question because it should be on ELL, though it is too old to migrate now. – alphabet Jul 15 '23 at 17:33

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