Quick answer
Si tuviera más tiempo, aprendería a cocinar.
If I had more time, I would learn to cook. The si half takes the imperfect subjunctive; the other half takes the conditional. Never two conditionals.
The words of this lesson
The daydream at the kitchen table
It is Sunday evening and someone says si tuviera más tiempo, aprendería a cocinar. Everything about that sentence is a machine with two halves. The si half names the condition that is not true — you do not have the time. The other half names what would follow.
Keep listening and the same shape keeps coming: si ganara más, me mudaría al centro. Si no trabajara los sábados, iríamos a la playa. Si fuera tú, hablaría con ella. Two halves, two different tenses, always in that pairing.
The one rule that decides the sentence
Here it is, and it is the whole lesson: si plus the imperfect subjunctive, comma, then the conditional. Si tuviera tiempo, aprendería. The conditional never goes after si — there is no si tendría in Spanish, in any country, at any level. English speakers produce it constantly because English says "if I would have", so watch for it in your own sentences.
You can swap the halves and the rule survives untouched: aprendería a cocinar si tuviera más tiempo. Whichever end si sits at, that is where the imperfect subjunctive goes, and the conditional sits at the other end.
Building the two forms
The imperfect subjunctive comes from a form you already half know: take the ellos form of the indefinido, drop -ron and add -ra, -ras, -ra, -ramos, -rais, -ran. So tuvieron → tuviera, fueron → fuera, pudieron → pudiera, hicieron → hiciera, hablaron → hablara, comieron → comiera. Every irregular verb you struggled with in the past tense pays you back here. The -se forms (tuviese, fuese) mean exactly the same and are common in Spain.
The conditional is easier: the full infinitive plus -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. Aprendería, viviría, hablaría. The same dozen verbs that shortened in the future shorten here too: tendría, podría, haría, diría, saldría. Two related places where the same phrase appears: ojalá tuviera más tiempo (I wish I had more time) and habla como si fuera el jefe (he talks as if he were the boss).
Where you are matters
The rule is identical across the Spanish-speaking world. Spain uses both <span class="es-inline">si tuviera</span> and <span class="es-inline">si tuviese</span> freely; Latin America prefers the <span class="es-inline">-ra</span> forms in speech. In some spoken varieties, notably parts of the Andes and the Basque Country, people do say <span class="es-inline">si tendría</span> locally — it is a regionalism, and it is not what you should learn or write.
Memory trick
Si + imperfecto de subjuntivo, then the conditional. Never si + condicional.
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Si tendría más tiempo, aprendería a cocinar.
Si tuviera más tiempo, aprendería a cocinar.
The conditional cannot follow si. The condition takes the imperfect subjunctive: tuviera.
Si fuera rico, compraría una casa y sería feliz si podría.
Si fuera rico, compraría una casa.
Podría after si is the same mistake twice over. If you need a second condition, it is si pudiera.
Si tuviera tiempo, aprendiera a cocinar.
Si tuviera tiempo, aprendería a cocinar.
The result half never takes the subjunctive. It takes the conditional: aprendería.
Practice
Practise these if things were different
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
Which sentence says "If I had more time, I would learn to cook"?