Konditional

The conditional mood

Where English adds "would" ("I would like", "we would go"), Hungarian adds a suffix to the verb. The marker is -na / -ne (by vowel harmony), followed by the personal ending.

The indefinite forms

Person	Back vowels: olvas (read)	Front vowels: kér (ask for)
én	olvasnék	kérnék
te	olvasnál	kérnél
ő / Ön	olvasna	kérne
mi	olvasnánk	kérnénk
ti	olvasnátok	kérnétek
ők / Önök	olvasnának	kérnének

Note the "I" form: it is -nék after back and front vowels alike (olvasnék, kérnék). The definite forms have their own endings (olvasnám, kérném - I would read it, I would ask for it), but at A1 the indefinite set does most of the work.

Polite requests

The single most useful conditional is szeretnék, "I would like". It turns a demand into a request, just as "I'd like" does in English:

• Szeretnék egy kávét. - I'd like a coffee.
• Szeretnék fizetni. - I'd like to pay.
• Kérnék egy lángost sajttal. - I'd like a lángos with cheese, please.
• Tudna segíteni? - Could you help (me)? (polite, to one person)

At a market stall by Lake Balaton, Kérek (I ask for) works, but Kérnék or Szeretnék sounds friendlier.

"If" sentences

For imagined situations, both halves take the conditional, where English uses a past form after "if": Ha sok pénzem lenne, Budapesten laknék. - If I had a lot of money, I would live in Budapest. (lenne is the conditional of "be".) The English-speaker mistake is to put the ha clause in the past tense, copying "if I had".