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- Topic: Polish >
- "Ona mówi dobranoc."
43 Comments
445
You use the same verb for both, at least in the two meanings you are probably thinking of.
Polish has the following (the first verb in pair is imperfective, the second perfective):
mówić/powiedzieć – to say something, to tell something short
mówić/– – to speak a language
przemawiać/przemówić - to speak, to give a speech
opowiadać/opowiedzieć - to tell a story, to describe an event
rozmawiać/porozmawiać – to speak with someone, to converse
and more
EDIT: since speaking a language is not an action that can be used in perfective sense, I fixed my list
Better yet, a language notebook. I find spiral notebooks and composition books work best.
Oh wow, suddenly I understand why a Pole I used to know would always say "I speak him"
Just wondering how you would make this past tense? As in, "she said good night"
Past tense (Czas przeszły):
She said: "Good night" - Powiedziała: ,,Dobranoc"
That would be "Ona powiedziała dobranoc".
That comes from "powiedzieć", a perfective verb, which means that she said it 'succesfully'. From imperfective "mówić" you'd have "mówiła", but that would either mean that she said it on several occasions, or that she was... interrupted while saying it (didn't finish)?
Thanks :) Can "mówiła" be used if she said it but you didn't hear? eg. she said it as she was leaving a room, and I was repeating it for someone else? All these tenses are complicated :(
Can't I translate this as She wishes good night? I undetstand that to wish and to say slightly differ in meaning, but normally we WISH good night, not SAY
I wonder how different is the politeness of English people compared to Polish people.
Yes, I think "says goodnight" makes sense and is common in, at least, American English. "Wish goodnight" also makes sense, I think, but it's less common.
Also, I think these two phrases have different meanings, even though saying goodnight usually involves wishing goodnight (unless you're acting fake), and wishing it usually involves saying it.
"Saying..." puts the emphasis on the act of speaking the words, but "wishing..." refers more to the whole general act of extending your good will.
In English, "she says good night" and "she wishes him good night" is pretty much interchangeable, right? This is not the case in Polish, so this sentence is not valid, I believe. "Dobranoc" should be in quotes and the meaning is not the same as in "she wishes good night".
You wouldn't translate "say hello to..." as "powiedz cześć..."
Just wanted to point it out, because it may be confusing to English speakers.
"To wish goodnight" - "życzyć dobrej nocy" is absolutely correct, but bookish. You do not often say that in real life.
That would be wrong.
- The form "told" is a past participle, while the Polish phrase is in present tense.
- For the verb "tell" the direct object is the person to whom you tell something or tell something to do. In other words, the verb "tell" is always followed by a person. In the contrary, for the verb "say", the direct object is what is being said, and the person to whom it is being said is only optional. In this phrase, the person to whom something is being said is not known, we know only what is being said. Hence, we need the verb "say", not "speak". See also https://www.espressoenglish.net/difference-between-say-tell-and-speak/
"She wishes goodnight" is not good English. My ear, at least, demands a person to whom it is wished: "She wishes him goodnight", etc.
I'd also disagree with the claim that we don't 'say' goodnight. We do. It's by far the most common and natural form, and works without the 'him' or whatever. 'Wishing' good is rather oldfashioned.
See your giving context to a contextully barren phrase mucking up the translation. As in it could be easliy used in the english language completely normally (providing context). Say if your old xenophobic grandma asks you for the 17th time to repeat a line the main character just said in her 7pm G rated white soap opera. So your somewhat annoyed, but also not, because your old grandma is dying of irreversible super-dead cancer and you should spend time with her because you didnt spend that much time with her through your years and your trying to make up for it now with awkward chit chat about smartphones, but then you realise you ARE annoyed because why are you sitting here repeating lines in a soap opera when you could be outside, surfing a tutle or something. You don't even like it and neither do you like listening to her rant about how the new character they've brought in is tanned so therefore probably is isis or something, middle east something bombs something xenophobia. but then just before you answer her you remember that her cancer is in stage dead and so begrudgingly lean over and say - "she is saying goodnight!"
What is the reason for the spelling, would it be read differently and would it meant something else if it would be spellied "muvi" instead of "movi"?
"mówi" and "muwi" (if it was a word) would be pronounced the same way: "muvi" in English script.
"ó" and "u" are the same sound, it's only a matter of ortography. Mostly such differences are coming from the fact that words were pronounced differently a few centuries ago, but some sounds have come to sound the same now.
For example "morze" (the sea) and "może" (maybe) are pronounced the very same way nowadays.
The difference is important because of how the sounds change when you add cases:"lód" (ice) and "lud" (a people or ethnic group) are pronounced the same in nominative, but the genitives "lodu" and "ludu" are pronounced differently.
i can't write it down by memory but i can write other polish words like ''tak'' and ''nie'' which means yes and no or''kogut '' and ''pies'' which means chicken and dog and anyway i know half the language .polish is so simple to learn I only started to lean polish like 1 month ago !!!!!!!!!!!!
'kogut' is male chicken, 'kura' is female, and 'kurczak' is mostly used for food, also means baby chicken :p
Both are correct: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goodnight
Both are 'best answers' here, as it turns out.
The sentence is quite sloppy and confusing. It should be written as a citation:
Ona mówi: ,,Dobranoc" - She is saying: "Good night"/ She says: "Good night"
So tell goodnight is wrong? I wonder why. Btw strange there's no Polish course in Russian or Ukrainian (the latter has only English AFAIK)
You can tell stories, you can tell someone to do something, but you can't just "tell goodnight". br0d4's comment already covered that.
I don't believe there will ever be enough volunteers to contribute to such courses.
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Does anyone find that "Ona mówi dobranoc" sounds weird po polsku like, it's not incorrect but I don't think I've ever heard someone say that (context I grew up speaking Polish but never learned how to write in it, so I have gaps in my knowledge for sure)
It's probably not the most common thing to say, plus technically it should be written as: Ona mówi „Dobranoc”.
We can't really use the inverted commas (even the English ones) because Duolingo has problems in dealing with them when grading.
Czemu tu nie ma apostrofa przy goodnight? Czy to nie może być : She says ,, good night'' , skoro ona mówi a często polacy robią apostrofy przy cytatach?
That's just not something an English speaker would say. You can speak a language, but a word or a sentence you say.
