Polish Conditionals

As the name suggests, okresy warunkowe or zdania warunkowe (Conditional Sentences) have to do with conditions i.e. one condition or conditions must be met so that something else could happen. This phenomenon is present in both the English and Polish language and we distinguish three conditionals plus the so-called zero conditional. They all will be described and compared below.

Zerowy okres warunkowy (Zero Conditional) indicates that one thing always comes automatically after another and expresses prawdy ogólne (General Truths). There is a small difference in this conditional as the structure in English sentence is:

if/when + Simple Present, Simple Present

and in Polish sentence it is:

jeśli/jeżeli/kiedy + czas teraźniejszy (Present Simple)/czas przyszły (Future Tense), czas teraźniejszy (Present Simple)/czas przyszły (will/won’t)

In English:
If/When you heat water, it boils.
If/When you don’t eat, you die.
If/When he misses the bus, he is late for work.

In Polish:
Jeśli/Jeżeli podgrzejesz wodę, zagotuje się. (in both sentences – Future Simple)
Jeśli/Jeżeli nie jesz, umierasz. (in both sentences – Simple Present)
Jeśli/Jeżeli spóźni się na autobus, spóźni się do pracy. (in both sentences – Future Simple)

Pierwszy okres warunkowy (First Conditional) refers to possible future actions. Here, the condition is very probable to occur.

The key difference between English and Polish is in the use of tenses because in English it is:

if/when + Present Simple, will/won’t

whereas in Polish it is:

jeśli/jeżeli/kiedy + czas przyszły (will/won’t), czas przyszły (will/won’t)

In English:
If/When you learn, you will go to England.
If/When he has time, he will come to my party.
If/When I don’t earn enough money, I won’t buy a new car.

In Polish:
Jeśli/Jeżeli/Kiedy będziesz się uczył, pojedziesz do Anglii.
Jeśli/Jeżeli/Kiedy będzie mieć czas, przyjdzie na moje przyjęcie.
Jeśli/Jeżeli/Kiedy nie zarobię wystarczająco dużo pieniędzy, nie kupię nowego samochodu.

There are also other words that can be used in pierwszy okres warunkowy (First Conditional):

- jeśli/jeżeli nie (unless) e.g. Zrobię to, jeśli/jeżeli nie pójdę do kina. (I’ll do it unless I go to the ciemna.); notice that we have forma przecząca (negative form) and in English there is no negation after ‘unless’

- zakładając, że (providing/providing that) e.g. Patrycja będzie szczęśliwa zakładając, że wygra tą nagrodę. (Patricia will be happy provided/providing (that) she wins this prize.)

- pod warunkiem, że (on condition that) e.g. Pomogę ci pod warunkiem, że zrobisz zakupy. (I will help you on condition (that) you do the shopping.)

- jeśli/jeżeli (suppose/supposing that) e.g. Jeśli/Jeżeli kupią sobie psa, będą mieć problem. (If they buy a dog, they will have a problem.)

- tak długo jak/dopóki (as/long as) e.g. Tak długo jak/Dopóki nie zjesz, nie wyjdziesz z domu. (As/So long as you don’t eat, you won’t leave the house.)

- inaczej/w przeciwnym wypadku (otherwise) e.g. Musisz chodzić do pracy. Inaczej/W przeciwnym wypadku stracisz ją (You have to go to work. Otherwise you lose it.).

Drugi okres warunkowy (Second Conditional) refers to the present and future, but this time we can say that the condition cannot be realized.

The English structure is:

if + Simple Past, would + bare infinitive

and in Polish we have almost the same situation:

gdyby + czas przeszły (Simple Past), tryb przypuszczający (verbs with –by ending)

Liczba pojedyncza (Singular):

gdybym ja zrobił/zrobiła (if I did)
gdybyś ty zrobił/zrobiła (if you did)
gdyby on zrobił (if he did)
gdyby ona zrobiła (if she did)
gdyby ono zrobiło (if it did)

Liczba mnoga (Plural):

gdybyśmy zrobili/zrobiły (if we did)
gdybyście zrobili/zrobiły (if you did)
gdyby oni zrobili (if they did)
gdyby one zrobiły (if they did)

Polish tryb warunkowy (verbs with –by ending)

Liczba pojedyncza (Singular):

ja zrobiłbym/zrobiłabym (I would do)
ty zrobiłbyś/zrobiłabyś (you would do)
on zrobiłby (he would do)
ona zrobiłaby (she would do)
ono zrobiłoby (it would do)

Liczba mnoga (Plural):

my zrobilibyśmy/zrobiłybyśmy (we would do)
wy zrobilibyście/zrobiłybyście (you would do)
oni zrobiliby (they would do)
one zrobiłyby (they would do)

And now a few examples of sentences in drugi okres warunkowy (Second Conditional):

In English:
If I had enough money, I would go to Italy.
If she knew who you are, she wouldn’t want to be with you.
If I were you, I would go to the doctor.

In Polish:
Gdybym miał/miała wystarczająco dużo pieniędzy, pojechałabym do Włoch.
Gdyby wiedziała kim jesteś, nie chciałaby być z tobą.
Gdybym był/była na twoim miejscu, poszedłbym-poszłabym do lekarza.

Trzeci okres warunkowy (Third Conditional) refers to the past and this condition cannot be realized as the situation described in sentences of this type happened in the past. Here is the structure:

English one:
if + past perfect, would have + Future Perfect in the Past

Polish one:
gdyby/jeśli/jeżeli + czas przeszły (Simple Past),
tryb przypuszczający (verbs with –by ending)

In English:
If I had known earlier, I would have prepared.
If he hadn’t driven so fast, he wouldn’t have had the accident.
If we had learned more, we would have passed that exam.

In Polish:
Gdybym wiedziała wcześniej, przygotowałabym się.
Gdyby nie jechał tak szybko, nie miałby wypadku.
Gdybyśmy uczyli/uczyły się więcej, zdalibyśmy/zdałybyśmy tamten egzamin.

There are also mieszane okresy warunkowe (Mixed Conditionals) – we can mix drugi okres warunkowy (Second Conditional) with trzeci okres warunkowy (Third Conditional) and the other way round.

In English:
If I hadn’t forgotten my credit card, I wouldn’t have to come back home now.
If you were more polite, you wouldn’t have shouted at that woman.
If they didn’t speak Italian, they would have had problems to understand the lecturer.

In Polish:
Gdybym nie zapomniał/zapomniała mojej karty kredytowej, nie musiałbym/musiałabym wracać do domu teraz.
Gdybyś był/była bardziej uprzejmy/uprzejma, nie krzyczałbyś/krzyczałabyś na tamtą kobietę.
Gdyby nie mówili/mówiły po włosku, mieliby/miałyby problemy, żeby zrozumieć wykładowcę.

That would be all as far as okresy/zdania warunkowe (Conditional Sentences) are concerned. They are frequently used in everyday language both in English and Polish. We sometimes even do not realize how often we use the particular tense or grammar construction especially when we speak the language fluently and we do not have to think about what we should use. I hope this short explanation of okresy/zdania warunkowe (Conditional Sentences) will help learners of Polish to use it correctly and without any problems or mistakes.

Ivonka

Awesome! Thanks!

....who ever thinks of conditionals?

If I thought about conditionals, i would get a headache! Thanks Ivonka, great as usual.

To nie jest bardzo dobre zdanie po angielsku i troszeczke drziwne. If they did'nt speak Italian, they would have problems to understand the lecture. This should be-'had they not been able to speak Italian, they would have had problems in understanding the lecture. twoje zdanie jest jak polskie zdanie. Angielski jezyk jest inny czasem i chyba trudniejszy.

If I had'nt forgotten my credit card, I would't have had to come back home now-lepiej! Tez nie ma po angielsku 'we sometimes even do not realize' lepiej napisac 'sometimes, we do not even realize...slowo 'even' musi byc w innym miejscu.

If she knew who you were, she would'nt want to be with you. Trzeba kupic dobra ksiazke jezyka angielskiego.

Ivonka's explanation re Polish conditional sentences is great. Many thanks. One further observation: in all the examples (I think) the subject is the same in both main and subordinate clause... If the subjects of the two clauses are different are the conditional sentence constructions the same? For example, is the following sentence correct?

Gdyby Polska wygrała mecz, to byłbym szczęśliwy.

In the subordinate clause the subject is 'Polska' and in the main clause the subject is 'ja'.

Correct.
More correct (without "to" in the main clause):
Gdyby Polska wygrała mecz, byłbym szczęśliwy.
The use of "to" is very common, but it's considered colloquial, so you should try to avoid (especially in written language) if you want to sound as a well-educated person, but if you use it, don't worry, almost everybody does :)

Michał, I've found the Americans use the conditional even more than the Brits: 'If I WERE you.' (US) vs. 'If I WAS you. (UK)

I'm not convinced that this very thorough description would really be understood by most English speakers trying to learn Polish. note: The following criticism and suggestions are meant to be helpful rather than hostile.

For one, the conditional terminology you use seems to be part of the tradition of teaching English as a second language and nothing that native speakers are ever taught in school or even think about (the extent to which conditionals were covered in my US education was the admonition to say "If I were" instead of "If I was").

Giving so many gender/number combinations for each Polish example makes them look harder than they are too. This is a phobia of mine because of a guide I had that insisted on giving past forms as

Also, it makes the very simple Polish system seem more complicated than it really is. The learner has to work through the whole thing to find out (for instance) that Polish doesn't distinguish "If I had the money I'd go to Spain" (which could still happen) and "If I'd had the money, I'd have gone to Spain" (which cannot happen).

Gdybym miał pieniądze, pojechałbym do Hiszpanii.


For the English speaking Polish learner, I'd introduce jeśli/jeżeli and the kinds of tenses that can follow them.

Then quite separately, I'd talk about the single Polish conditional (which also does duty as a subjunctive, essentially it's an all round counterfactional).

I'd do that by giving the by forms separately

first person: bym
byśmy

second person (familiar): byś
byście

third person :
by

Then I'd point out that these always co occur with the past stem (which looks like the third person past tense and like it agrees with the subject in number and gender)

Then some basic word/morpheme rules, that the by forms usually occur after the first word in the clause and written together with it .

Lastly, I think

English:

looks more natural to me than

English one: