I was wondering all the time, how I can express just 'past' with 'if' in English?
And finally I found one sentence,
- if you watched and listened to the previous podcast, you'll find that our favorite teams were Arsenal and Manchester United.
I don't think this is a 'if + past tense and would/could/should sentence. this is talking about just the real past with 'if', not imagination and unreal. this is not fixed sentences such as 'past tense + would/should/could or had p.p + would/should/could have p.p.
in common sense, if you use 'if + past tense', the following sentence should be with would/could/should and it also means unreal and a rare possibility. However, the above sentence just indicates the incident in the past with 'if'
LSS, Here is my question. If I want to talk about just the past like the above sentence with 'if', which tense should I use for the following sentence? the above sentence uses 'will' which I guess makes a difference with 'would' (unreal conditional) and it also uses 'were'. Can I just use 'are' instead? does this make a difference?
I also, while searching, found out 'Past real conditional' which says 'if past tense + simple past tense', but I don't think this explains my question.