"Co byś chciał dostać?"

Translation: What would you like to get?

[NanoRicci]

Hi! Could this sentence be written as: 'Co chciałbyś dostać?'. Or does the 'byś' have to be detached from the verb when we write a question? Thanks in advance!

[mihxal]

yes, it could

[NanoRicci]

Dziękuję bardzo :)

[fiorass]

In fact "Co chciałbyś dostać?" sounds more natural to me (as a native speaker).
But it may vary depending on the region / dialect / personal habits ;)

[Majoras_master]

A lot of people seem to agree with you according to what I found with a search on Google: http://zapytaj.onet.pl/Category/002,010/2,2307658,quotChcialbysquot_czy_quotchcial_bysquot.html

[MaxVermeij]

Just a general remark on the "conditional" side: I don't understand any of it. There is no explanation section in Duolingo itself, and "Polish grammar in a nutshell" by Swan (which usually gives very good explanations) is rather vague and short as far as the "conditional" is concerned. Is there a website providing a thorough explanation somewhere on the internet?

[alik1989]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ixdm4a9fnxuex9w/conditional%20mood.pdf?dl=0

[one_half_3544]

Is 'co byłbyś chciał dostać?' correct?

[Jellei]

No.

[one_half_3544]

Interesting. Wiktionary https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/chcie%C4%87 lists it as an option for conditional along with "chciałbyś". Or do I misunderstand something fundamental here?

EDIT: only 67 hits in google for "byłbyś chciał"...

[mihxal]

It is past conditional, very rare nowadays.

[one_half_3544]

How would it be translated?
"What would you have liked to get?"

[Jellei]

Yeah, I felt that this is not wrong, but strange - and not exactly a translation of the sentence... I cannot really imagine how this could be used. Maybe your translation is correct, but I'm not really sure.

Yeah, Polish. ;)

I can imagine "Co chciałbyś był dostać", but I don't even know if I am right about it.

[Daisy68406]

The dropbox explanation says to add by+personal endings. Chciał is 3rd person masculine. You would be chcialeś. What am I missing? And why isn't it conditional? (Chciałbys)

[alik1989]

The so-called ł-stem is chciał- and the personal ending in chciałeś is just the -ś, the /e/ is only inserted there to make it more pronounceable. Here you don't attach it to the verb, but to the conditional by-, so you get byś.

Both chciałbyś and byś chciał are equivalent, because the conditional particle by- is detachable from the verb. Therefore you could also say: "Co chciałbyś dostać?"

In this sentence both options are possible, but there are other examples where just of them is acceptable, because by- is an unaccented clitic and follows the same rules as pronouns.