Could Have in the Third Conditional (English Grammar)

Hello. This is Jack from tofluency.com. Recently, I made a video on how to

use could have and a few people asked me about how to use this in conditionals - so

that is exactly what I'm going to explain in this video... so keep watching

to learn how to use could have in the third conditional. Before we specifically

look at using could have in the third conditional, I want to just give a

summary of how this conditional is used. So, we use it to

talk about hypothetical situations in the past. To give you an example, imagine

that your friends had a BBQ - you didn't go to the BBQ because you didn't know about it

they didn't tell you about this BBQ, so you can say: if I had known, I would have

gone. If I had known, I would have gone. Now, we can use could have instead of

would have in the third conditional - the difference between these two is

basically... would have is definite and could have is a possibility. So, thinking

about the BBQ example again you can also say: if I had known, I could have gone. If

I had known, I could have gone. Now, this is saying that I didn't know so it

wasn't possible and it's talking about a possibility in the past in a

hypothetical way. Now, here are two more examples to help you understand this: he

couldn't have afforded University if his parents hadn't given him the money. So this

person... his parents gave him money to go to university so it was possible for him

to go. But talking about a hypothetical situation: if his parents hadn't given

him the money, then he couldn't have afforded it. I could have helped you if

you had told me. I could have helped you if you had told me. If you have any

questions about this, then please leave them

in the comment section below and be sure to check out the description for links

to the videos that are similar to this one. So, thank you for watching and I'll

see you next time!