Conjugation help - were to be
I'm looking to say "if their roles were to be summarized into a few words, it would be that they should be..."
The paper is on the Francoist era, so I'm wondering what tense it should be in. Whichever it is, I probably don't know it.
succor! ayuda!
2 Answers
That "were to be summarized" would probably be expressed more commonly as "we had to summarize", using imperfect subjunctive, and that "it would be" using conditional tense.
P.S. Socorro.
Hi, Jos-O,
Just to expand slightly on Lazarus, since your sentence is basically an "if...[such and such were to happen]...then...[such and such would be true]..." , you will need the imperfect subjunctive in the "if" clause followed by the condictional in the "then" clause.
This is the basic pattern for the "if...then..." structures.
