Wolałbym usiąść w tym fotelu przy oknie.

Wolałbym is the conditional form of woleć and means I would prefer.
Wolę is the present-tense form and means I prefer.

So the sentence sounds like a polite or tentative preference:

• Wolę usiąść... = I prefer to sit...
• Wolałbym usiąść... = I would prefer to sit...

In this kind of situation, wolałbym is very natural.

-bym marks the conditional in the 1st person singular: I would.

So:

• wolał = he preferred / he was preferring
• wolałbym = I would prefer (said by a man)

In Polish, this conditional ending often attaches to the past-form stem. That is why the word looks longer than an English learner might expect.

You can also sometimes separate it in a sentence:

• Ja bym wolał usiąść...

But wolałbym usiąść... is completely normal and very common.

No. Wolałbym is the masculine form.

A woman would say:

• Wolałabym usiąść w tym fotelu przy oknie.

This happens because Polish past and conditional forms usually show the speaker’s gender in the singular.

Usiąść means to sit down — the action of moving into a seated position.

That is different from:

• siedzieć = to be sitting
• siadać = imperfective to sit down / to be sitting down, often repeated or ongoing in some sense

In this sentence, the speaker is talking about the act of taking a seat, so usiąść is the best choice.

Compare:

• Wolałbym usiąść... = I’d prefer to sit down...
• Wolałbym siedzieć... = I’d prefer to be sitting...

The first is about the action of sitting down; the second is about the state of already being seated.

Because after w meaning in for a location, Polish normally uses the locative case.

So:

• dictionary form: ten fotel
• locative: w tym fotelu

Both words change:

• ten → tym
• fotel → fotelu

Here the meaning is location: in this armchair, not movement into it as a target in the accusative.

Because fotel is in the locative singular after w.

Many masculine nouns change their ending in the locative:

• fotel → w fotelu
• dom → w domu
• hotelu from hotel

So w tym fotelu is the correct case form after the preposition w when it means in.

With fotel meaning armchair, Polish normally says w fotelu.

That is because an armchair is thought of as something you sit in, not just on. English works similarly: you often sit in an armchair but on a chair.

So:

• w fotelu = natural for armchair
• na krześle = natural for chair

Using na fotelu would usually sound odd in this context.

Przy means by, next to, or beside. It always takes the locative case.

So:

• okno = window
• przy oknie = by the window

That is why okno changes to oknie.

Both can mean something like by the window, but there is a nuance:

• przy oknie = right by / next to the window
• koło okna = near the window

In many situations they are close in meaning, but przy often suggests more direct adjacency.

Also, they take different cases:

• przy
  • locative → przy oknie
• koło
  • genitive → koło okna

Yes. Polish word order is more flexible than English word order, because case endings show the grammatical relationships.

The sentence as given is neutral and natural:

• Wolałbym usiąść w tym fotelu przy oknie.

But you could change the order for emphasis, for example:

• W tym fotelu przy oknie wolałbym usiąść.
• Przy oknie wolałbym usiąść w tym fotelu.

These versions are possible, but they shift emphasis. The original sentence is probably the most straightforward choice.

A rough English-friendly guide is:

vo-WAHW-bim

A few useful points:

• w sounds like English v
• ł sounds like English w
• y is not exactly English ee; it is a shorter, more central vowel
• the cluster łb can feel awkward at first, so learners often need to slow it down: wo-lał-bym

You do not need to pronounce it perfectly right away, but it helps to remember that ł is not an l sound in modern Polish.