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which one of these sentences is correct?!

1)You shouldn't have gone to the cinema yesterday.
2)you shouldn't went to the cinema yesterday.

To me sentence 1 sounds better than the second one,but the fact that when we are refering to a specific time( here yesterday) we must use past simple kinda made me confused;and the other thing is that as far as I remember I've never heard using should/shouldn't with the past form of the verbs. What if I want to use conditionals for expressing the same thing:which one should I use?!

1)It would have been better if you hadn't gone to the cinema
2)It would have been better if you didn't go to the cinema

To me third conditionl(first sentence) sounds more logical than the mixed conditional but I'm still not sure

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    Idiomatically, native speakers (especially Brits) often omit the article when talking about going to work, school, hospital, etc., but I don't know of any region where competent speakers would do this when talking about going to the cinema. Your case #2 (if you didn't go) strongly implies a possible future act that you're being advised to avoid doing (or in a slightly contrived context, a habitual activity). But hadn't gone unambiguously entails the fact that you did in fact go - albeit unwisely, so far as the speaker is concerned.
    – FumbleFingers
    Sep 20, 2017 at 14:51
  • @FumbleFingersYes,that's true.Now that I've checked cinema in my dictionary I couldn't find any examples that articles weren't used but as a non-native speaker I've heard it alot.What about the verb tenses used in my two first examples which one is correct?present perfect or past simple?!
    – anonymous
    Sep 20, 2017 at 15:14
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    Some (badly-educated) dialectal speakers might say things like I shouldn't have went to work yesterday, but it's very uncommon and would generally be considered "ignorant". Standard English requires gone there.
    – FumbleFingers
    Sep 20, 2017 at 15:17
  • @FumbleFingers sorry I think I must have misunderstood you.What you mean is the only thing that I can say in this case is,It would have been better if you hadn't gone to the cinema and neither You shouldn't have gone to the cinema nor You shouldn't went to cinema is correct.Is it right?!
    – anonymous
    Sep 20, 2017 at 15:25
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    @anonymous - No, FumbleFingers is saying that shouldn't went is wrong, shouldn't have went is wrong, and shouldn't have gone IS correct.
    – stangdon
    Sep 20, 2017 at 16:06

1 Answer 1

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Modal verbs can't combine with past tense forms. You can't say "should went", "might went", "should stayed", "will walked", "can listened".

Modal verbs are followed by infinitives: "should go", "might go", "should stay", "will walk", "can listen".

They can also be followed by perfect infinitives: "should have gone", "might have gone", "should have stayed", "will have walked".

They cannot be followed by finite or tensed verbs such as "went" or "goes".

So, of your two sentences:

1) You shouldn't have gone to the cinema yesterday.

2) *You shouldn't went to the cinema yesterday.

The second option is ungrammatical, because "should went" and "shouldn't went" are ungrammatical. Nothing to do with sequence of tenses or numbered conditionals. Option 1 is the only one available. (If you were speaking to a time-traveller, you could also use "You shouldn't go to the cinema yesterday" to advise them on what to do yesterday.)

As for your next example:

1) It would have been better if you hadn't gone to the cinema

2) It would have been better if you didn't go to the cinema

Option 1 is far more likely because you're presumably talking about the past. If you were talking about someone's habit of going to the cinema, and saying that if they didn't have that cinema-going habit then things would have turned out better, then you could use option 2.

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