How to make sentences that mean "If" in Korean

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The use of the "~했다면," "~했으면," and "~했더라면" constructions in Korean provides another way to express conditional conditions or situations. First, "~했다면" is used to express hypothetical conditions that could happen in the past or present. For example, "만약 비가 왔다면, 나는 집에 있었을 것이다" means "If it had rained, I would have been at home."

In the previous lesson, you learned how to add ~(으)면 and ~ ㄴ/는다 면 to the work/adjective / 이다 in the present tense, but not in past-tense. In this lesson, you will learn how to add to words in past tense by saying, "I want to...".

~ (으) 면 in Past Tense.

In the previous lesson, you learned how to add ~(으) 면to present tense sentences. Here is an example:

> 내가 가면….
   If / when I left...

If you want to make a sentence that has meaning "when I leave" in past tense, you can do so by adding ~았 / 었으면 to the word:

> 내가 갔으면…
   If I left…

In present tense, adding ~ (으) 면 to the front of a verb/adjective can create the sense of if and when. However, in past tense, the sentence can only mean "if".

Before proceeding to the subject matter, let's take a look at the following explanations:

By attaching ~았 / 었다면 to a verb/adjective, we can get the meaning of "If I..." in the past tense. For example:

> 내가 갔다 면… 

   If I went

There is basically no difference between:

내가 갔으면… = If I left…

&

내가 갔다 면… = If I went

Besides that, we can also add "~ 았 / 었 더라면" to have the same meaning. As an example:

> 내가 갔더 라면… 

   If I went…

Expressing the meaning of "to have" in Korean is done by putting ~ 았 / 었 / 했을 것이다 on the word that is joined in the next clause in the sentence. For example:

> 돈을 많았더 라면 내가 원하는 건 뭐든지 샀을거야

   If I had a lot of money, I would buy whatever I want

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