# Kdyby měl



## Thomas1

Jana337 said:


> In Czech:





Jana337 said:


> Kdybych měl milión dolarů, změnil bych svět.


So would the following be correct (masculine gender):
1. kdybych měl
2. kdybys(?)měl
3. Kdyby měl
4. Kdybychmy(?) měli
5. Kdybyste(?) měli
6. Kdyby měli

Then you also have the conditional particle _by_ and it takes on personal endings, and it is not dependant on gender but on person, is that right?




Jana337 said:


> So we do not append "by" to verbs, although it can be a part of prepositions (aby, kdyby). Gender- and person-dependant prepositions: Isn't it fun?


Errr… I am not sure about Czech, although I presume this may be pretty much the same, but they are conjunctions in Polish. 


Děkuju moc,
Tom


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## Jana337

Thomas1 said:


> So would the following be correct (masculine gender):
> 1. kdybych měl
> 2. kdybys(?)měl
> 3. Kdyby měl
> 4. Kdybychmy(?) měli kdybychom
> 5. Kdybyste(?) měli
> 6. Kdyby měli
> and it is not dependant on gender but on person, is that right?


Absolutely. 

A remark: -ch, -s, -chom, -ste are degenerated conjugation of "to be"
kdyby jsem měl kdybych měl
kdyby jsi měl kdybys měl
kdyby jsme měli kdybychom měli
kdyby jste měli kdybyste měli

The [s][/s]ed ones are wrong but painfully many Czechs use them.


> Errr… I am not sure about Czech, although I presume this may be pretty much the same, but they are conjunctions in Polish.


Ach Bože.  I am going to correct it. Děkuji. 

Jana


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## cajzl

BY is not a particle.
It is the aorist of the verb býti (to be). The only aorist in nowadays Czech (but it is secret, only gurus know it).

The old forms of the aorist:

Sing.
1. bych
2. by (sic!)
3. by

Plur.
1. bychom
2. byste
3. bychu

There was also the dual number of the aorist in Old Czech (but only the biggest gurus know it).

*Thus the present condicional is formed from the aorist of býti and the past participle.*

Essentially it is the same in most (maybe all) Slavic languages.
With some peculiarities in Polish, Russian, ...


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## Thomas1

cajzl said:


> BY is not a particle.
> It is the aorist of the verb býti (to be). The only aorist in nowadays Czech (but it is secret, only gurus know it).
> 
> The old forms of the aorist:
> 
> Sing.
> 1. bych
> 2. by (sic!)
> 3. by
> 
> Plur.
> 1. bychom
> 2. byste
> 3. bychu
> 
> There was also the dual number of the aorist in Old Czech (but only the biggest gurus know it).
> 
> *Thus the present condicional is formed from the aorist of býti and the past participle.*
> 
> Essentially it is the same in most (maybe all) Slavic languages.
> With some peculiarities in Polish, Russian, ...


Cajzl, my guru you raised a few interesting topics. 


The aorist was used in very archaic Polish too, but even then it was sporadic. It used to be in all Slavic languages (as far as I know it is still existent in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian and Croatian—mostly Štokavski dialect (note that not all dialects use/have it within their variant)). It is the vestige of our common protoplast Proto Slavic, and one of its characteristics is the same form of the second and third person of the singular. Aorist is a tense as well as a mood.
The origin of the particle (yes, it is a particle ) _by_ is the verb _to be_, my supposition is that this is the case in all Slavic languages, whether it is the aorist or not (now I only know it is true for Czech, Polish and Macedonian). In our case _Kdybych-->by_ is a particle since it is the marker of the conditional, and it is a part of another word. The true origin of it is the aorist, but its modern function, i.e. the particle, changed its archaic one (you don’t use it in Czech in its primordial function, do you?). It is a remnant of once independently existing aorist which now has a reduced meaning and a different function (which in our case are: the hypothetical connotations and a particle of the conjunction). 

The dual number was existent in many Slavic languages it is the heritage of our ancestor language.

If you have any counterarguments, comments, etc. to what I have just written I will be happy to learn them. 


Tom


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## werrr

Jana337 said:


> Ach Bože.  I am going to correct it. Děkuji.


You're only halfway to correct it. 


cajzl said:


> BY is not a particle.
> It is the aorist of the verb býti (to be). The only aorist in nowadays Czech (but it is secret, only gurus know it).


It's the only frequently used aorist in nowadays Czech. There're other aorists, like *vece*. Maybe they're too bookish, but they're still used.


Thomas1 said:


> The origin of the particle (yes, it is a particle ) _by_ is the verb _to be_, my supposition is that this is the case in all Slavic languages, whether it is the aorist or not (now I only know it is true for Czech, Polish and Macedonian).


I don't think it's a particle since it's inflective. Or do you think we've different particles for different persons?


> In our case _Kdybych-->by_ is a particle since it is the marker of the conditional, and it is a part of another word.


In similar way, *jsi* is a particle  since it is the marker of past tense, and it is a part of another word (*tys* = *ty jsi*).


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## Thomas1

werrr said:


> You're only halfway to correct it.
> 
> It's the only frequently used aorist in nowadays Czech. There're other aorists, like *vece*. Maybe they're too bookish, but they're still used.


Of course I am not a Czech so I can't really judge it but do you really use the aorist in modern Czech?



werrr said:


> I don't think it's a particle since it's inflective. Or do you think we've different particles for different persons?


 
I was thinking about this too, and came to the same conclusion. According to the strictest definition of what a particle is, _by_ is not supposed to undergo such morphological changes.
Basically, _by_ has almost all characteristics of a particle except that it is *seemingly* conjugated. I think that since it derives from another construction which once existed in our languages, and now is lost, it has kept its desinences_, _but each of the forms works on its own, and should be examined separately if you want to classify it from a part-of-speech point of view. If it indeed were the aorist you could make such forms as _ja bych, ty by, on by, my bychom, _etc. as this is the real aorist, and used it in modern Czech as another tense/mood (of course, it holds true for all the verbs).

Out of curiosity I gave myself a browse of a few descriptive grammars of various Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Czech), and they seem to agree that _by_ is a particle (if you want bibliography, let me know, I’ll be happy to share it with you).


_Kdyby_ is made of two functionally words, i.e. _kdy_ and _by_.
_Gdy_ is a conjunction, _by _is a particle—a marker of the conditional—whose origin is the aorist (cf. my previous post). They both form the conjunction (_kdybych_) hypothesizing in its implications.


Thomas


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