Some subjunctive help

Question

This is a pretty specific question but it will help me understand subjunctive a bit better.
If I want to say "If I do it correctly, I will improve my talents greatly," can I say "Si pueda hacerlo correcto, mejorare mi talento mucho."? I don't need grammar specifics; I know there are plenty of ways to say the original sentence, but if I was somewhere in south america, and I said to someone "Si pueda hacerlo correcto, mejorare mi talento mucho," would he understand? (of course, assuming the sentence was in context)

or maybe I wouldn't use subjunctive because the second clause is somewhat certain? What confuses me is that to me the statement is certain, but in reality it is very possible that doing the activity (the one described by "it" and "lo") would not improve my talents, which makes the statement uncertain, hence my use of subjunctive.

Answer 1

My advice is: don't relate indicative/subjunctive to certainty/uncertainty. Most times it just doesn't work. Apart from that, you shouldn't be looking at the second part of the sentence : the moods of the verbs only affect to the clause they belong.

Eddy is right, the sentence as you wrote it must take indicative. As a rule, "if" must not be followed by present subjunctive.

Si puedo hacerlo correctamente, mejoraré mucho mis habilidades.

Si pudiera hacerlo correctamente, mejoraría mucho mis habilidades.

The difference is the same as the English "If I can/if I could", the second one is more hypothetical.

I agree. In Spanish, the word "si" can never be followed by the present subjunctive. That's a pretty hard and fast rule. - sinmeta, Dec 12, 2012

Answer 2

I don't think your sentence requires the subjunctive. However changing the English phrase to "If I were to do it correctly then my talent would improve", the subjunctive would be necessary.

Si pudiera hacerlo correctamente me mejoraría la habilidad mucho.