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- Topic: Polish >
- "Kobiety jedzą chleb."
28 Comments
2003
Earlier I tried "dziecko je chleb" as 'Child is eating bread' which was reported wrong, the correction being that an indefinite or definite article should be there (A child ... or The child ...).
So regarding this sentence "kobiety jedzą chleb" I tried what I expected to be wrong 'Women are eating bread' but that is reportely right, which surprised me as it seems inconsistent with the earlier sentence. Maybe because the latter is plural?
Sorry, I'm an absolute beginner in Polish :)
In your examples, you would need an article (either definite or indefinite) with child. Similarly, you couldn't say "I see child". The only exception to this rule is if the noun is uncountable(in which case it can't take an indefinite article), so you can say "Milk tastes good" or "The milk tastes good", but not "A milk tastes good."
For the plural, there is no indefinite plural article (like French des), so an article is not needed. That's why it is correct to say "Women eat...", but not "Woman eats".
My answer was: "The women eats bread" and it showed that it is wrong.. when I saw your comment I did not understand actually Why it is not correct to say " woman eats" can you please explain it in a simpler way?
In English you can have countable and uncountable nouns. "Woman" is countable, since you can have "one woman", "two women", "three women", etc. (Nouns that are uncountable are often measured in volume, such as milk or water; you can't normally say "one milk" or "two milks" unless you mean "one cup/glass/litre of milk.")
If you have a countable noun in the singular, it needs an article. The article can be definite ("the") or indefinite ("a/an") depending on the context, but there has to be one there. In the plural an article in not always required, since English does not have a plural, indefinite article.
If you actually typed "The women eats bread," then the mistake was in subject-verb agreement; "women" is plural but "eats" is singular.
Actually, the indefinite article is possible with "milk." "A milk that has no lactose in it, is soy milk."
That's a good point, but in that example "milk" becomes a countable noun by specifying a type of milk.
It sounds like it was marked incorrect because your English was incorrect. In English you can't say "Child is eating bread" but you can say "Women are eating bread".
So for this sentence, is women are eating bread the same as "the women are eating bread"? Or would I be wrong if I put "the"?
Since Polish doesn't have any articles ("the", "a", "an") both translations should usually be acceptable. It could also be "The women are eating the bread."
That's what I was thinking "Andri"!!! But some good comments from people!! You can also say in English "child is eating bread and woman is eating bread!! "Hippo".
It is definitely not correct to say "Child is eating bread." Singular, countable nouns (eg, child) require an article.
Edit: Follow this link and look under the second point.
What would the statement 'women eat bread' translate into? Im fluent in polish conversationally but sitting down and translating stuff is a different story.
It will be “kobiety jedzą chleb”, there is no difference in Polish between “eat” and “are eating“.
We don't know what "this" is, but the answer that I see is "The women are eating bread.", so it's Continous.
It is accepted, the program should have marked it as correct. There are bugs sometimes though.
If I've heard correctly, the word "jedzą" is (almost) pronounced as "yed-zone" here, whereas "dz" always seems to make an English "j" sound, so am I missing something here?
"dz" is rather the last sound of "woods".
It's "dż" that sounds like English "j".
