"Co byś chciał dostać?"
Translation:What would you like to get?
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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
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?
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"...
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.
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.