"Chcieliśmy wam pomóc."

Translation: We wanted to help you.

[Modric853]

Why is this not "We wanted you to help"

[Jellei]

Because this is not what the Polish sentence says. "Chcieliśmy wam pomóc: means exactly that we wanted to be helpful in whatever you (plural) are doing.

Your version would probably be "Chcieliśmy, żebyście/byście/abyście (nam) pomogli"

I put "nam" in brackets because your sentence doesn't specify if it's 'to help us', I just considered it the most probable option.

Wiktionary entry for 'byś', the others work in the same way in conjugation.

[Modric853]

thanks but polish is to hard :) Chcielismy = we wanted, wam = you and Pomoc = to help, so to me that makes "we wanted you to help" ???

[Jellei]

Treat 'wam', at least here, as "to you". We wanted to help 'to you'. The word order of English and Polish sentence is simply different.

[Modric853]

OK Jellei I think I understand now

[JanKLinde]

@Jellei

I don't really understand that construction you used as a translation for "We wanted you to help". Well, if I look at the declension table, it seems to be conditional, which I haven't learned about so far. So could it also be translated to "Chcieliśmy, że pomoglibyście"? And if so, which version is more common?

[Jellei]

I gotta say that I am not sure how to explain it :D

Let's start with your sentence, it's the easier part: I'm afraid it's simply wrong, so it also shows which version is more common :D

It's also not a matter of tense, "We [wanted/want] you to help" will only differ in the form of "chcieć" ("[Chcieliśmy/Chcemy], żebyście (nam) pomogli"), it won't affect the other part.

The English and Polish constructions... are just very different. In English "you" is some kind of an object, but you can't leave it as an object in the Polish sentence. So some form of "żeby" in conditional mood is introduced instead. I am trying to think of some explanation, and as conditional deals with some 'potential' situations, maybe we could think of it as "We want some potential situation to happen", or maybe "to have happened", given that the tense used is Past Tense...

[JanKLinde]

Thanks a lot for trying, but think I'll have to advance in the course to understand this ;D

[PaulinkoLubner]

We wanted to help you (plural ) wam is you (pl)

[Arnoldpitt]

I s there any guidance as to when a verb should end -iszmy and when it should end is(with accent)my

[alik1989]

I'm not aware of any verbs ending in -iszmy.

[Jellei]

"(na)piszmy", but that's an imperative (let's write), so it's quite a different thing.