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RegDwigнt
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Different conditional clauses — "if you saw", "if you were to see", "if you had seen"

Given the following sentences, what is the difference between the conditional clauses in them?

  • If you saw a lion in a thick forest, what would you do?
  • If you were to see a lion in a thick forest, what would you do?

I'm asking this simple thing because it's confusing me, since there is no such thing in my native language (it's quite different from English).


I can understand this one (it may be a different question):

If you had seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?

but it's a bit confusing me. In my native language, it's always formulated as follows:

If you would have seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?

Does this make any difference in English?

Tiny
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