Breakdown of Gdyby odważyli się poświęcić swój czas wolny, byliby teraz sławni.
być
to be
teraz
now
swój
one's own
sławny
famous
gdyby
if (hypothetical)
czas wolny
free time
odważyć się
to dare
poświęcić
to sacrifice
Questions & Answers about Gdyby odważyli się poświęcić swój czas wolny, byliby teraz sławni.
The English translation says "had dared", but the Polish verb odważyli looks like a normal past tense. How does Polish form past conditions?
Polish doesn't have a separate tense for "had done" like English. To express a past counterfactual ("If they had dared"), Polish uses the exact same conditional structure as it does for the present: gdyby + the past tense form of the verb (odważyli). The context or time markers (like teraz) tell us whether the condition or result is in the past or present.
In the second clause, we have byliby (they would be). Why isn't there a by attached to odważyli in the first clause?
The conditional particle by is already attached to gdy to make gdyby (if). In Polish conditionals, you only need one by per clause. So, gdyby odważyli się already contains the conditional meaning, and you don't add another by directly to the verb in that half of the sentence.
Could I use ich instead of swój here, since it means "their free time"?
Using ich (ich czas wolny) would technically mean they sacrificed someone else's free time (a different group of people). Because the people doing the sacrificing are the same people whose time is being sacrificed, you must use the reflexive possessive pronoun swój (one's own).
Why is the adjective wolny placed after the noun czas, rather than before it like in English?
In Polish, adjectives that define a specific category or type of something usually go after the noun. Czas wolny is treated as a fixed concept (leisure time), much like język polski (the Polish language). If wolny were used to describe a trait like "slow," it would go before the noun.
Why is the adjective at the end sławni and not sławne?
Sławni is the masculine personal (virile) plural form. We know the subject is a group containing at least one male because of the verb forms odważyli and byliby. If the group were entirely female, children, or animals, the sentence would use the non-virile forms: Gdyby odważyły się... byłyby teraz sławne.
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