"She is a woman."
Translation:Ona jest kobietą.
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Is there a way of knowing how a word will turn in the instrumental based on the nominative? Should one assume that all words that end in -a in the nominative get a A-ogonek in the instrumental, or the rules are wilder than that? Thank you for your answers and for your incredible work :)
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Instrumental is the most regular case, has fewest rules and no exceptions. a→ą is indeed correct.
it is a name of case. Polish language has 7 cases- Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative and Vocative.
That means every noun has potentially 14 forms (usually some look the same, but which changes between words).
Instrumental is a form that theoretlically answers question "using what?" but it is also used after certain verbs and prepositions.
One of those verbs are być=to be and zostać=to become.
Which basically means- you need to look up "instrumental/narzędnik" form of noun to use after "jestem/jesteś/jest/jesteście/jesteśmy/są"
And this form of noun KOBIETA is KOBIETĄ
So unlike Russian and Ukrainian, I see that Polish uses "to be" in the present tense. Is this unique to Polish or do other Slavic languages do this too?
We use verb "to be" in present tense in Croatian. Jesam/sam = am Jesi/si = (you - singular) are Jest/je = is Jesmo/smo = (we) are Jeste/ste = (you - plural) are Jesu/su = (they) are The shortened form is used almost always
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Like Croats, we do the same in Serbian. Additionally, we use two alphabets - Latin (so we can read Croatian which is very similar to Serbian) and Cyrillic (makes it easy for us to read Russian). Confusing enough ?!??!?!?
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Not using it is limited to East Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and I believe Rusyn too)
Sometimes if you press and hold a letter the options with the different accents will pop up over the letter, then you just slide along to the one you want. Good luck! :)
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On Android you can simply install the Google Keyboard and enable the Polish QWERTY keyboard.
On Android, I suggest installing the app called SwiftKey - you can have up to 5 languages on one keyboard (just hold the 'basic letter' for a moment and the special characters appear).
On iPhone, I believe they are just there automatically, again, just hold the 'basic letter'.
i would just hold the basic letter down and it shows the accents you can add. i also recommend changing your keyboard language to polish to give you text predictions.
Ee... in English? Or in Polish?
"I am" = "(ja) jestem"
"he/she/it is" = "(on/ona/ono) jest"
late to the party here but when do you use each one of those? Is one more casual than the other or is it just personal preference?
I think that in most situations the Instrumental form is better. In fact, we don't even accept "Ona to kobieta" because we believe it just sounds too clumsy if on the left side there's a personal pronoun.
The Instrumental variant is more... descriptive, while the Nominative one kinda sounds like "She = woman".
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Well kobieta is like "this woman" ye and thats all i can say , sorry if this did not help you
"kobieta" is Nominative - the basic, dictionary form of the noun, used mostly for the subject of the sentence.
"kobietą" is Instrumental - used mostly after "with" and in sentences like this one (She is a woman).
The comment you're replying to also has a reply from me and I really think it answers the question quite well...
You learn verb with cases it needs. Or cases with most popular verbs.
With is=jest the rule is
jest noun (instrumental)
to/(to jest)/(jest to) noun (nominative)
jest adjective (nominative)
Everytime I write the "a" it says that it is wrong. Anybody have any suggestions??
I'm sorry, but your question is not really specific, where do you put "a", what's your whole answer?
Is there a level two? If so, how do I get it? I have been very happy with the course. You all have done a good job! Thank you! Barbara
I'm glad you like it (although the current team can't really take credit for the course structure) :)
Level two... well, there are so-called 'crown levels', so taking a skill (e.g. "Plurals") once gets you to crown level 1, and then you can take every skill again to reach higher crown levels. This gets you more practice, and the exercises are more difficult at higher levels.
There are only three tenses in Polish if you don't count the pluperfect.
In case you meant 'seven types of cases', then you won't encounter them all at once in one lesson because they are introduced more or less gradually.
This one is an exercises, where you can become familiar with one of the uses of the instrumental case.
Thanks! I find them quite confusing, especially with tailed ę and ą, and changes in suffixes. It can get a bit frustrating when a new lesson introduces lubia, lubią, lubię and lubi but the context isn't immediately clear. I'll get there!
You need to enable a Polish keyboard on your device, and then it's "left ctrl+left alt+A" or "right alt+A". Or "longpress A" on a phone and then it's among the options.
That's for Ą, same for Ę, just with E, of course.
At least for a beginner: "kobieta" is mostly used for the subject of the sentence (Kobieta jest wysoka = The woman is tall) and in "This is a woman" (To jest kobieta).
"kobietą" is mostly used in sentences like this one, built as "[pronoun] is [noun]" (Ona jest kobietą = She is a woman) or "[noun] is [noun]" (Anna jest kobietą = Anna is a woman).
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Whats wrong with "Ona to kobieta"? Or is it that you didnt include it because its not been taught at this stage of the course?
Things that were not taught yet should still be accepted if they're correct, one has the right to have some knowledge from outside the course ;)
However, the construction of "pronoun + noun in Nominative" to be very clumsy, something that we shouldn't accept. With pronouns, "jest + Instrumental" is the only valid option.