Breakdown of Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal.
Questions & Answers about Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal.
Bych is the conditional marker for 1st person singular (“I would…”).
- Byl rád = “I was glad / I used to be glad.” (simple past)
- Byl bych rád = “I would be glad.” (hypothetical / conditional)
In this sentence you are not saying you were glad in the past; you are saying you would be glad if the other person called you. Without bych, the meaning changes completely.
Both use rád, but they behave differently:
- Rád bych + infinitive = “I would like to do X (myself).”
- Rád bych ti večer zavolal. – “I’d like to call you this evening.” (I do the calling.)
- Byl bych rád, kdybys + verb = “I would be glad if you did X.”
- Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal. – You do the calling; I would appreciate it.
So Rád bych is about your own action, while Byl bych rád, kdybys… is about someone else’s action that would please you.
Czech makes gender agreement in the past tense and with rád/ráda.
For the speaker:
- Male speaker: Byl bych rád…
- Female speaker: Byla bych ráda…
For plural:
- Mixed / all-male group: Byli bychom rádi…
- All-female group: Byly bychom rády…
In your sentence, Byl bych rád implies the speaker is grammatically masculine (a man, or masculine generic).
Yes. Zavolal is a past/conditional participle and agrees with the (understood) subject ty (“you”):
- Talking to a man:
Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal. - Talking to a woman:
Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolala. - Talking to more people (informal plural):
Byl bych rád, kdybyste mi večer zavolali.
So, in this exact form (zavolal), the person you’re asking to call is male (or grammatically masculine by default).
Kdyby is the basic conditional conjunction “if” (for unreal or hypothetical situations).
To show who would do the action, Czech adds a personal ending:
- kdybych – if I …
- kdybys – if you (sg.) …
- kdyby – if he/she/it …
- kdybychom – if we …
- kdybyste – if you (pl./formal) …
So:
- kdybys mi zavolal ≈ “if you called me”
- kdybych ti zavolal ≈ “if I called you”
Kdyby alone doesn’t show the person; kdybys is “if you (singular) …”.
You will hear kdyby jsi in spoken Czech, but in standard / correct written Czech, the form is kdybys.
Conceptually:
- kdybys = kdyby + jsi merged into one word.
Standard:
- ✅ Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal.
Non‑standard / colloquial:
- ❌ Byl bych rád, kdyby jsi mi večer zavolal. (very common in speech, avoided in careful writing)
Czech has several forms of “me” depending on case and position in the sentence.
Case
The verb zavolat takes a dative for the person:
zavolat komu? = “call whom?” → mi / mně (to me)
mě / mne is accusative, used with different verbs (e.g. vidět mě – “see me”).Short vs. full forms (clitics)
- Unstressed, “short” forms in the middle of the sentence: mi
- Stressed or isolated forms: mně
In your sentence, the unstressed pronoun in the middle of the clause is best as:
- kdybys mi večer zavolal (natural, neutral)
- kdybys mně večer zavolal (possible, but with extra emphasis on me)
Czech uses a special form for the conditional: a past participle + a conditional clitic (bych, bys, by…).
The underlying pattern is:
- zavolal bys mi – “you would call me”
In the kdybys‑clause, the conditional marker -bys is attached to kdyby, so the verb appears as the bare participle zavolal:
- kdybys mi zavolal ≈ “if you would call me / if you called me”
So zavolal here is not a simple past, it’s the verb form used in conditional constructions.
Formally, zavolal is the same participle used in the past tense (zavolal jsem – “I called”), but:
- In a conditional clause with kdyby / kdybys the time reference is usually future or hypothetical, not real past.
- The English equivalent here is “if you called me this evening”, which also uses a past form (“called”) for a future hypothetical.
So even though zavolal looks like past, the whole structure kdybys mi večer zavolal means something like “if you called me this evening (which you haven’t yet)” → a future possibility, not a past event.
Czech distinguishes aspect:
- volat – imperfective: to be calling, to call repeatedly / habitually.
- zavolat – perfective: to make a (single, completed) call.
In this context you want one concrete action (“make a call once in the evening”), so Czech prefers the perfective:
- kdybys mi večer zavolal – “if you made a call to me this evening (once)”
If you said kdybys mi večer volal, it would sound more like:
- “if you were calling me in the evening (for some time / repeatedly)” – unusual in this request.
Word order is flexible but not all options sound natural.
Common, natural orders:
- kdybys mi večer zavolal – very natural
- kdybys mi zavolal večer – also fine
- kdybys večer zavolal mně – possible, with emphasis on mně (“and not someone else”)
Unnatural / clumsy:
- kdybys večer mi zavolal – sounds odd; pronoun mi likes to come early (2nd position).
Rule of thumb: short pronouns like mi, ti, mu tend to appear right after the first stressed element in the clause, so kdybys mi večer zavolal is the default.
With vy (formal or plural “you”), you change both the conditional ending and the verb agreement:
To one person formally (gender of you still matters):
- to a man: Byl bych rád, kdybyste mi večer zavolal.
- to a woman: Byl bych rád, kdybyste mi večer zavolala.
To several people:
- mixed / all-male: Byl bych rád, kdybyste mi večer zavolali.
- all-female: Byl bych rád, kdybyste mi večer zavolaly.
Everything else in the sentence stays the same.
Yes. In standard Czech punctuation, you must put a comma before a subordinate clause introduced by kdyby / kdybys.
- Byl bych rád, kdybys mi večer zavolal. ✅
- Byl bych rád kdybys mi večer zavolal. ❌ (incorrect in writing)
So: main clause Byl bych rád, then a comma, then the conditional clause kdybys mi večer zavolal.