No. 464 in Estonian
poleks
"Poleks" is the conditional form of "pole," meaning "would not be" or "would not have" in English.
In a sentence
Kui ma teaksin, et sa tuled, siis ma poleks koju jäänud.
If I knew you were coming, I wouldn't have stayed home.
In this sentence, 'poleks' is used as a conditional past form of the verb 'to be' (olema), expressing something that did not happen but could have under different circumstances.
Ma poleks kunagi arvanud, et see võimalik on.
I would never have thought that this is possible.
Here, 'poleks' is again used in a conditional past form to express an unrealized scenario in the past.
Ilma tema abita me poleks selle tööga hakkama saanud.
Without their help, we wouldn't have managed with this task.
The word 'poleks' demonstrates its use in indicating a dependency for the past hypothetical scenario.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “poleks” in actual Estonian podcasts.
Find “poleks” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Estonian podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Estonian books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).