More advanced Conditionals with Unless, Providing and Only if

Hello and welcome back to another look at conditional forms.

This one is quite advanced as we incorporate the use of the expressions:

unless, providing and only if..

..into our conditional sentences.

I hope you find it useful.

Check out the available transcript for this recording to listen and read at the same time.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there. My name's Steve Galatz and welcome back to my podcast of short lessons for learners of the English language with listeners in over 40 countries worldwide. My hope is to continue unlocking your English. Here is another lesson on conditional forms and today we're looking at constructing conditional sentences using unless providing and only if there is another podcast where I explain the use of unless have a look for that one. You may wish to check that one out first here today we will see how unless providing and only if can be used to express the same idea. Now let's start with unless if you are not 18 years old, you cannot buy and drink alcohol or unless you are 18 years old, you cannot buy or drink alcohol. Now that could also be 21 in some places. Another example could be unless you have permission, you cannot enter the building or unless you've finished all your exercises, you cannot continue to the next lesson. Here are two more. Unless you want to be part of the traffic jam stuck in traffic, you should take the train and unless you want a hangover, I think you should stop drinking. So now we're going to use providing this word can be used in a similar way to unless, so let's compare these two examples. Unless you are over 21 you cannot rent a car. You can rent a car providing you are over 21 so unless begins with a more negative idea, whereas providing is more positive. Here's some more examples with a less that I'm going to also convert using, providing. Notice how in some cases the sentence is modified to keep the same meaning. Unless you want to pay worst prices, you should book your tickets in advance. Providing you book your tickets in advance. You will pay better prices unless you tell them now they'll get angry providing you tell them now they won't get angry. Don't forget to take an umbrella unless you want to get wet. Providing you take your umbrella. You won't get wet unless you take your medicine. You won't get better providing you take your medicine, you will get better. You should leave earlier unless you want to arrive late providing you leave earlier, you shouldn't arrive late. Okay, now let's see the third expression on the list, which is only if, and again this expression has a similar meaning to our less and providing, so let's see. Unless you buy your ticket now, you won't get a seat. You will get a seat providing you buy the ticket. Now only if you buy the ticket. Now will you get a seat? No, I did overstress the use of will you in that last example, just to point out the order of those two words. In a normal situation we would say you will get a seat, but this is an inverted form in English where if you begin the sentence with only if in the second clause it's necessary to reverse the order of the subject and the verb or the auxiliary verb. Let's try some more of the previous examples and see if you notice that order change only if you book your tickets in advance. Will you pay better prices? Only if you tell them now will they not get angry. Um also something to notice here, um, won't is not possible. So you cannot say won't they get angry? Cause that is more of a question. So here we'd have to say, will they not get angry? Only if you take your medicine will you get better? Only if you take your umbrella will you not get wet. Okay. So yeah. Why do we need to reverse the position of will and the pronoun with this form? Well it's an interesting question. There are several of these inverted forms in English and they all tend to be more formal and normally used in writing only. The good news is like unless providing an, if we can reverse the clauses and when you do that with only if, let's see what happens, you will pay better prices only if you book your tickets in advance. Yep. Now the contracted form won't is possible and the subject and will are the normal way around. It is a bit confusing, but unless you are writing very formally, you shouldn't need to worry too much about the only if inversion. Well that was another look at conditional forms. Hopefully it's been useful and that's it for this podcast, but I hope you join me in another and if any of you would like to get in contact with me to suggest any future podcast content or just to give me any feedback, you can reach me@thisemailaddressunlockedenglishatoutlook.com that's unlocked English. So not with ed at the end, unlockedEnglish@outlook.com.