Breakdown of Powinienem był przewidzieć ten problem.
być
to be
ten
this (m)
problem
problem
powinien
should, ought to
przewidzieć
to foresee
Questions & Answers about Powinienem był przewidzieć ten problem.
Why do we use był here instead of just saying Powinienem przewidzieć ten problem?
Adding był explicitly marks an unfulfilled past obligation. If you just say Powinienem przewidzieć, it means "I ought to foresee" (present). Powinienem był przewidzieć makes it crystal clear that this is about the past: "I should have foreseen it (but I didn't)."
Since the speaker is "I" (first person), why is the helper word był instead of byłem?
The first-person ending -em is already attached to powinien (making it powinienem). In this construction, the word był acts like a helper particle indicating the past tense for a masculine speaker. Because the personal ending is already on the first word, był stays in its base third-person masculine form.
How would a woman say this exact sentence?
Could I use the imperfective verb przewidywać here instead of the perfective przewidzieć?
You could, but it changes the nuance. Przewidzieć (perfective) focuses on the result: successfully spotting this specific problem before it happened. If you used przewidywać (imperfective), it would mean you should have been in the ongoing process of anticipating problems, rather than failing to spot this one specific event.
Why is it ten problem? Is it in the nominative or accusative case?
It is in the accusative case because it is the direct object of the verb przewidzieć. For masculine inanimate nouns like problem, the accusative form is completely identical to the nominative (dictionary) form, which is why it doesn't change its ending here.
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