E028 In Good Condition

Welcome to English with Kimberley.

In this episode, I want talk to you about a problem I’ve had while buying a home recently.

The problem is that there are so many ‘conditions’!

Before I tell you why, shall we have a quiz first?

The sentence, ‘If you buy a house, you could get stressed out’ is what kind of sentence?

Is it…

a) Imperative?

b) Conditional?

c) Interrogative?

or d) Declarative?

Why don’t I repeat the question for you?

The sentence, ‘If you buy a house, you could get stressed out’ is what kind of sentence?

Is it…?

a) Imperative?

b) Conditional?

c) Interrogative?

or d) Declarative?

Did you manage to work out that it’s b) – ‘Conditional’ – no, well I’m not surprised!

So, let me explain.

An imperative sentence is an order like, ‘Sit down’ or ‘Stand up’.

An interrogative sentence is a question like, ‘What’s the time?’.

A declarative sentence is a statement like, ‘He is tall’.

Finally, a conditional is not really a kind of sentence but a way of saying that if something occurs then something will happen. Did you notice I used the word ‘if’ and ‘will’ in telling what a conditional is?

In our example, we said that, ‘if you buy a home’ the condition – ‘you could get stressed out’ the result.

There are four types of conditions – but we don’t have the time to go over them in this podcast, but could type ‘conditionals’ in your search engine and see what comes up.

By the way, did you know that when you buy a home in Australia, it is likely to be something called a ‘strata’ – that is the home might be one of several on a single piece of land – in other words there may be parts of the land that everybody owns and parts of the land that is owned individually. If you look up ‘strata title, Australia’ on the internet you’ll get lots more information.

In our final quiz – which one of these sentences is not a conditional?

a) If you heat ice, it boils.

b) If you stay too long in the sun, you’ll get sunburnt.

c) If I won a lot of money, I’d buy a house.

d) If I’d known her number, I’d have invited her.

or e) I can speak two languages.

And again – which one of these sentences is not a conditional?

But here’s a clue, which sentence doesn’t have the word ‘if’ in it?

a) If you heat ice, it boils.

b) If you stay too long in the sun, you’ll get sunburnt.

c) If I won a lot of money, I’d buy a house.

d) If I’d known her number, I’d have invited her.

or e) I can speak two languages.

Yes, that’s it! It’s e) ‘I can speak two languages – because there’s no ‘if’ in it.

Finally, can you guess why buying the home has been such a problem for me? Well, it’s because everybody keeps on giving me conditions – that is, if this and if that and so on!

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You can also find a script of this podcast at www.goaustralia.biz

I hope you have enjoyed this podcast and you’ll join me again.