B2 — upper-intermediateThe future tense and the conditional

Conditional II

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Conditional II: bio bih uradio, for what can no longer be undone

The l-participle is back at work, and this time it comes in a pair. You have already built the perfect with it (radio sam), Conditional I (radio bih) and Future II (budem radio). Now take Conditional I of the verb biti itself, bio bih “I would be”, and hang a second participle on it: bio bih radio. The result is a two-storey form, Conditional II.

Why a second storey? To say outright what Conditional I alone leaves open: the thing that did not happen belongs to the past, and the chance is gone for good. Došao bih is “I would come” (in general, given the chance). Bio bih došao is “I would have come” (back then; I didn’t, and now it is too late). English draws exactly this line (“would come” against “would have come”) every time; Serbian draws it only when it wants to. In conversation Serbs usually leave the past to Conditional I as well: Da sam znao, došao bih “If I’d known, I’d have come”. Conditional II sounds bookish: you rarely hear it in conversation, but you meet it in books and careful writing. So the main thing is to recognise and understand it in a text; when you speak, Conditional I will do, as it does for Serbs.

Assembly: the would-clitic, the participle of biti, the participle of the main verb

Every part is one you already know; they only need putting together. Take uraditi “to do (and finish)” and lay the form out by person and gender:

Examples

Person	Masculine	Feminine	Translation
I	bio bih uradio	bila bih uradila	I would have done (it)
you (singular)	bio bi uradio	bila bi uradila	you would have done
he / she	bio bi uradio	bila bi uradila	he / she would have done
we	bili bismo uradili	bile bismo uradile	we would have done
you (plural)	bili biste uradili	bile biste uradile	you would have done
they	bili bi uradili	bile bi uradile	they would have done

Read the form left to right in three steps: the participle bio (gender and number of the subject) → the would-clitic (person) → the participle of the main verb (gender and number again). English has no gender here, so that is the part to watch: a woman says bila bih uradila, with both participles feminine. The neuter works the same way; note that kola “car” is a neuter plural noun, hence bila stigla:

Nothing needs learning from scratch. The would-forms are the ones from Conditional I (the lesson “Conditional I”): bih for “I”, bismo for “we”, biste for “you” (plural or polite), bi for everyone else. The participle bio/bila/bilo/bili/bile is the one in the perfect bio sam “I was”. The participle of the main verb you have been building since the lesson “The l-participle”. Conditional II is simply their sum, without a single new ending.

Deeper etymology

Bio, bila, bili: where the l went

Serbian bio, Czech byl and Polish był are one and the same word, except that Serbian lost its l along the way. The Proto-Slavic participle *bylŭ (feminine *byla) survives almost unchanged in Czech and Polish, but in the Shtokavian dialects, on which standard Serbian is based, a word-final l turned into o: the same shift that gave so “salt”, vo “ox” and beo “white” (the lesson “L-vocalisation”). (English salt keeps the l that so gave up.) That is why it is bio but bila, bilo, bili: there the l is not at the end of the word and so it survived, exactly as in the pair radio and radila.

The root goes back much further. Proto-Slavic *byti continues an Indo-European root meaning “to grow, to become, to come into being” (*bʰuH-); Latin fui “I was” and English be belong to it as well. The kinship of biti with its Slavic relatives (Czech byl, Polish był) is laid out by Petar Skok in his etymological dictionary of Croatian or Serbian (Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika), published in Zagreb in 1971–1974.

The meaning: the past that did not happen

Conditional I is neutral as to time: Pomogao bih ti serves equally for “I’d help you, if need be” and “I’d have helped you back then”. Conditional II removes that uncertainty and pins the unrealised action firmly to the past: it could have happened, it did not, and that ship has sailed.

Look at what stands next to the form: usually a real past that explains why it did not work out (ali nisam znao, ali su joj ponudili premalo, ali sam izgubio), or an if-clause with da: da nije bilo gužve “if there hadn’t been a traffic jam”. That is the form’s typical frame: “I would have, but this got in the way”. No wonder Conditional II so often sounds like an excuse, a regret or a reproach.

Watch out

Typical mistakes of English speakers, 1: “have” copied from English. English builds this meaning with would have + participle, so the hand reaches for imati “to have”: “*imao bih pomogao”, “*bih imao pomogao”. Why it is wrong: Serbian builds its second storey from biti “to be”, never from imati; the job of English have is done by bio. The correct form: “I would have helped” = bio bih pomogao.

2: bio read as a real “was” or “been”. The learner hears “was” in bio and gets a jumble like “I was would helped”. Why it is wrong: in Conditional II bio is not the verb of the sentence but a small working part, a marker of the past; the meaning is carried by the second participle (pomogao). The correct form: bio bih on its own is simply Conditional I of biti, “I would be”: Bio bih srećan “I would be happy”. Add a second participle and you have Conditional II: bio bih pomogao “I would have helped (then)”. The test is simple: does a second participle follow bio bih?

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Conditional II: bio bih uradio

Conditional II (potencijal II, prošli potencijal) = Conditional I of biti + the l-participle of the main verb. Meaning: an unrealised possibility in the past, “I would have done it then, but didn’t”. Both participles agree with the subject in gender and number; the would-clitic carries the person.

Paradigm: uraditi

Person	Masculine	Feminine
I	bio bih uradio	bila bih uradila
you (singular)	bio bi uradio	bila bi uradila
he / she	bio bi uradio	bila bi uradila
we	bili bismo uradili	bile bismo uradile
you (plural)	bili biste uradili	bile biste uradile
they	bili bi uradili	bile bi uradile

Three steps: participle bio/bila/bilo/bili/bile by gender and number → would-clitic by person (bih, bi, bismo, biste) → participle of the main verb, again by gender and number. Neuter the same: Dete bi bilo zaspalo. The child would have fallen asleep. Neuter plural (kola “car”): Kola bi bila stigla na vreme. The car would have arrived on time.

Word order: the clitic second

participle first: Bio bih došao ranije.
subject first: Ja bih bio došao.
adverb first: Sigurno bih bio došao.
if-clause first, the clitic still not first after the comma: Da si me zvao, bio bih došao.
negation: Ne bih bio pristao.
question: Da li bi bio došao?
clitic chain li → would-clitic → Dat. → Acc. → se: Bio bih mu se javio.

Conditional I vs Conditional II

Conditional I	Conditional II	Difference
Pomogao bih ti.	Bio bih ti pomogao.	any time vs “then, but didn’t”
Ne bih pristala.	Ne bih bila pristala.	any time vs then
Rekli bismo ti.	Bili bismo ti rekli.	any time vs then

Where you meet it

unreal past condition (da + perfect, English “if I had…”): Da sam znao, bio bih ti rekao. In conversation usually: Da sam znao, rekao bih ti.
excuse with ali: Bio bih te sačekao, ali su me pozvali na sastanak.
reproach and regret: Što mi nisi rekao? Bio bih ti pomogao.
bookish text: fiction, journalism, law, science.

Sign: a real past nearby explains the obstacle: ali nisam znao, ali sam izgubio broj. Frame: “I would have, but…”.

Bookish: in speech Conditional I + context replaces it almost everywhere, even where English must say “would have”: Juče bih došao, ali sam bio bolestan. I would have come yesterday, but I was ill.