Gdybyś miał lekką torbę, mógłbyś zabrać więcej butów.

If you had a light bag, you could take more shoes.

Breakdown of Gdybyś miał lekką torbę, mógłbyś zabrać więcej butów.

• ty: you
• mieć: to have
• torba: the bag
• lekki: light
• gdyby: if
• móc: could
• zabrać: to take
• więcej: more
• but: the shoe

Questions & Answers about Gdybyś miał lekką torbę, mógłbyś zabrać więcej butów.

Why do we start with Gdybyś instead of the regular conjunction gdy?

Gdybyś is the combination of the conjunction gdyby (if) plus the 2nd-person enclitic -ś. It signals an unreal or hypothetical condition (the “second conditional”). A plain gdy would introduce a real or possible condition in the past or future, not a counterfactual one.

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What is the function of the -byś ending in Gdybyś miał?

The particle -by (here with the enclitic -ś) is used to form the Polish conditional mood. It attaches either to the verb (miałbyś) or to the pronoun (ty byś miał). In Gdybyś miał, it marks the clause as hypothetical: “If you were to have…”

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Why is the verb miał in the past tense (imperfective) and not present or future?

Polish expresses unreal/hypothetical conditions by using the past tense of the main verb plus the conditional particle. Even though the sense is “if you had (now) a light bag…,” the verb form is past imperfective: miał.

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What case is torbę, and why is lekką inflected that way?

torbę is feminine singular in the accusative case because it’s the direct object of miał (“had a bag”). Adjectives agree in gender, number and case, so lekka (nominative) becomes lekką (feminine, singular, accusative).

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Why do we say więcej butów and not więcej buty or więcej butów in another case?

After więcej (“more”), Polish uses the genitive plural: butów. So you get “more shoes” = więcej butów.

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Could you use wziąć instead of zabrać here?

Yes, in many contexts wziąć więcej butów (“take more shoes”) is a close synonym of zabrać więcej butów.

• wziąć emphasizes the action “to take”
• zabrać can also carry a nuance of “to remove/take away,” but in packing contexts they overlap.

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Why is mógłbyś (you could) used instead of a future tense like będziesz mógł (you will be able)?

The whole sentence is a counterfactual conditional. Polish uses the conditional form of móc (to be able) together with an infinitive (zabrać) to say “you could (if you had …).” A future real statement would be będziesz mógł + infinitive, but that doesn’t convey the hypothetical sense.

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Is the subject pronoun ty necessary in Gdybyś miał… mógłbyś…? Why isn’t it written?

In Polish verb endings (here -ś in gdybyś, mógłbyś) already encode the 2nd person singular, so the pronoun ty is optional and usually omitted unless you want emphasis.

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How do you generally form a second conditional (unreal/hypothetical) sentence in Polish?

Pattern:

1. Conditional conjunction gdyby
   • pronoun or verb+-by(ś)
     • verb in past tense
2. Comma
3. Main clause with pronoun (optional) + verb in past tense + -by(ś)
   • infinitive or noun phrase

Example structure:

• Gdybyś miał… , (to) mógłbyś zrobić…
• Gdyby oni wiedzieli… , byliby przyjechali…

In your sentence:
Gdybyś miał (past) + -byś, mógłbyś (past) + -byś + zabrać (infinitive).