"Napisalibyśmy coś do gazety."

Translation: We would write something for the newspaper.

[jaroze]

Shouldn't 'we would write something for the paper' by correct as well?

[Jellei]

Yes. Added 'paper'.

[deactivated user]

I know this sentence is part of the lesson on conditionals, but I wonder about "do" translated as "for" here. I thought it should/could be "to." I am thinking of two scenarios. Writing "to the newspaper" might be writing a letter to the editor (which may or not be published in the paper), or writing to complain about some issue, as a subscriber. Writing "for the newspaper" implies, to me anyway, that the speaker either works for the newspaper or intends to write an article for publication (possibly a freelance journalist?). How would you distinguish these scenarios in Polish? I would think "do" for the "to the newspaper" case, and "dla" for the "for" the newspaper case.

[Jellei]

I was wondering about that and my personal feel is that I'd use "dla gazety" if I was a regular full-time employee there and "do gazety" if I was more of a freelancer...? That's just my intuition.

The "coś" part makes the sentence work a lot better with "do gazety", I believe.

[englishman2341]

Dla = for
Do = to

[Magda760680]

Agh "we" isnt even there

[Jellei]

Of course it isn't, it's totally redundant, the form of the verb makes it obvious the subject is "we".

[JanuszWoro3]

What about "we could write something ..."?

Not in the sense of "we have the ability to write...", but instead with the meaning being "let's imagine a hypothetical situation in which we write ....".

[Jellei]

"Moglibyśmy/Mogłybyśmy coś napisać..."

[JanuszWoro3]

Yes, "moglibyśmy napisać" = "we could write", but I'm still not convinced that "we would write" is the only way to translate "napisalibyśmy".

But, I'll let it go.

Now that you can level up to the next crown by doing just one group of exercises instead of 30 groups, I am trying to get to Level 5 in each skill. I think I'm close to finishing, already almost 300 crowns.