“Coulda-woulda-shoulda …” 2 or Mixed conditionals in English language

In the last article we reviewed the main types of conditional sentences. However, situations cannot always be described by using one of them. In particular, this concerns “unreal conditions”, which leads us to a new kind - mixed conditional sentences.

Let's try to figure out what it means.

If something that happened or did not happen in the past could have influenced events in the present, we are dealing with a construction

Third conditional + Second conditional

 

If you had done what I said, you would be rich now. (But the man did not take the advice and now has nothing)

 

Another option – the construction

Second conditional + Third conditional

Namely, an event or condition that could occur in the present would have affected the result in the past:

If I were faster, I would have won the race. (But the man does not run fast enough at present, and therefore did not come first)