I see quite some time has been devoted to this subject. The first time I read the hairdresser example, the English struck me as quite wrong. I would add my two cents as follows:
If I went to the hairdresser, I'd spend a lot of money or If I went (had gone) to the hairdresser, I would have spent a lot of money.
Those seem to me to be the simplest way to correct it because one can't correctly say I would spent.
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Hola Sherri
We will correct that typo "I'd spent".
For your information, these sentences using "Si" with a past tense in the indicative are closer to being real than hypothetical. The "si" clause is closer to a "when" clause (When something happened). For this reason the translations that you are offering are not quite what we express here because they are talking about hypothetical events.
Saludos,
Inma
"If I went to the hairdresser, I'd spend a lot of money" is not necessarily a hypothetical, it can also refer to a pattern of behaviour in the past. In the latter sense it's equivalent to "whenever".
"If I went to the hairdresser, I spent a lot of money" would also be correct, and would mean the same.
In English, these are apparently referred to as "past real conditionals".
https://www.englishpage.com/conditional/pastconditional.html
I'm still unsure about the "if he had an accident" example. Maybe the best translation would be:
"If he has had an accident, he won't be going to work this week."
Points well-taken. That sentence was jarring to me. Unfortunately, when I read it, I really wasn't considering the subject matter of the lesson. I was just remarking on the fact that, in English, one can't correctly say I would spent.
I see quite some time has been devoted to this subject. The first time I read the hairdresser example, the English struck me as quite wrong. I would add my two cents as follows:
If I went to the hairdresser, I'd spend a lot of money or If I went (had gone) to the hairdresser, I would have spent a lot of money.
Those seem to me to be the simplest way to correct it because one can't correctly say I would spent.
.
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