"Macie dzieci?"
Translation:Do you have children?
44 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
True. "Y'all" is almost universally used in the southern USA, but elsewhere it is considered a regional dialect and seldom heard. Though migration, and TV are bringing southern accents and expressions to other parts of the country as well.
Historically, "you" was the English plural with the singular expressed by "thou" So when speaking to one person back in the 17th century you would say"Dost thou have children?" or "Hast thou children?" Over time, "you" came to be used as a polite/formal singular, like "vous" in French. And eventually people became offended when addressed as "thou". So "you" took over as both plural and singular, formal and informal.
1048
Either by intonation, or by adding the word czy (cognate of Esperanto ĉu).
You could rephrase this question to "Czy macie dzieci?", although it could be misheard as "Trzymacie dzieci?" –Are you holding (the) children?
334
Don't forget to tell that pronouncing "Trzymacie" and "Czy macie" identically is wrong ;)
568
Is the difference in pronunciation that the 'rz' part of 'trzymacie' is voiced, but the 'cz' of czy isn't?
334
"Rz" is voiced when it occurs after a voiced consonant: "drzewo" - "tree"; "brzeg" - "bank"/"coast" or after a vowel: "marzec" - "March". It is devoiced if it occurs after a voiceless consonant: "przed" - "before"/"in front of"; "trzymać" - "to hold". In Polish voiced consonants generally are devoiced if they're ending the word and this rule overrules previous ones: "rycerz" - "knight" is pronounced /rycesz/; "malarz" - "painter" is pronounced /malasz/ (even though "rz" is after a vowel). "Cz" is always unvoiced. The difference I was talking about is quite minor or even unnoticeable for some English speakers, but it changes the meaning of many words dramatically. Polish distinguishes between affricates and stop+fricative consonant clusters, for example: "czysta" - "clean" and "trzysta" - "three hundred". "Cz" is pronounced /tʂ/ and "trz" is pronounced /t͡ʂ/. The same difference occurs between "ts" and "c" and others.
More like, "ci" is pronounced together, softening the "c."
The syllables in "macie" are "ma-cie." The syllables in "dzieci" are "dzie-ci." The vowel in the second syllable of "macie" is "e." Second syllable of "dzieci" doesn't have any other vowel, so "i" is pronounced there as one (in addition to softening the "c.")
This might help (with pronunciation in general). In Polish, lots of combinations of letters end up being what we'd call one sound. http://www.pronunciationguide.info/Polish.html
I think you'd find that most conjugation tables are pretty self-explanatory:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mie%C4%87#Conjugation
http://sgjp.pl/leksemy/#267480/mie%C4%87
Regarding clarity, well... it's not our fault English isn't clear about whether it's singular or plural. All we can do is accept both versions, unless one of them doesn't make sense in that context.
495
This question ("Do you have children") came up twice in the Basics 2 practice session. My response the first time was, "Masz dzieci." This was counted as correct. The second time, I responded with "Macie dzieci." Also counted as correct. According to Jellei (MOD) in an earlier post, Masz and Macie are both correct, depending on who you are speaking to, and that Masz is first person singular and Macie is second person plural. My question: If Masz is first person singular, should the sentence not read, "I" have children, not do "you" have children?"
495
Thanks, rebecca, that makes total sense to say, "Mam dzieci." I'll try and let the "masz" and "macie" straight in my head. Which is full. :)