"Ona mówi po angielsku i po polsku."
Translation:She speaks English and Polish.
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In Polish, is there any difference between saying "She speaks English" (it's a skill someone has) and "She speaks in English" (she's speaking in English at that given moment)? I was just wondering given the use of "po" here. Thank you in advance :)
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Both can be translated to "ona mówi po angielsku".
You can say (and I think it's more commonly used) "ona zna angielski" – "she knows English" to speak about the skill.
Interestingly enough we used to say the same in Croatian (except we say ˝govori˝ and not mówi),today we'd say ˝Ona zna engleski˝ as well
Tho Croatian is much more similar to Russian if you look at the grammatical cases and their sufixes.
Маша и Медведь in Russian,Maša i medvjed in Croatian :P
Polish,Czech and Slovak do very much sound like dialects of Croatian,or at least those very dialects evolving in different ways,having been split by Magyars through history
'po angielsku', 'po polsku' - are adverbs, because they answer the questions 'how?' or 'what way?' and they are examples of two-words adverbs (adverb phrases).
First word is 'po' and second is an archaic declination of an adjective ending with 'u'. Other examples:
-Chodzę po cichu = I walk quietly
-Czytam po ciemku = I read in darkness
-Robię to po mojemu = I do this my way
-Ta książka jest napisana po angielsku = This book is written in english
As you see in the last example: 'po' stands for 'in'. Sometimes you can replace it with a normal, one-word adverb, for example:
-Chodzę cicho = I walk quietly
but mostly you can't do it, you don't say: 'ta książka jest napisana angielsko'. Some adverbs evolved from two-words to one-word expression. For example:
-Jem pomału = I eat slowly
it's confusing, I know...
I think the issue is that, with Spanish and German, I'd already been studying them for years before I joined Duo. Although I have been exposed to Polish from a young age, I've never studied it and so have zero knowledge or understanding of anything you just said! Once I get to a certain basic level, I may have to do a grammatical course as well.
in brief, I guess the best way, you can feel what 'po' means here, is the sentence:
-"to jest napisane po angielsku" = "this is written in english"
now you feel it?:) Anyway, good luck with polish! I realise it's not easy.
At first I thought that the sentence was "She speaks English in Polish" before I realized that did not make any sense.
Ona mówi po angielsku For russian like Она говорит по ангельски She speak angel language English is language of angels. It's funny...
it's an accusative sentence, right? So, what is the basic form of "english" in polish? po angielska?
- 3448
English - [język] angielski
Speak english - mówić po angielsku. It's dative case, but it's used only in this sentence. In any other sentences you will use dative form "angielskiemu" (like "I gave it for the english boy - dałem to angielskiemu chłopcu"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/angielski - full declension of angielski
(sorry for my English, ;) )
Why do you not default to stating the sentence at normal speed instead of slow first.
Yeah, im on a samsung, it was default slow, and because the i in polish is hard to hear, I missed it entirely and didn't hear the "i po polsku", getting it wrong twice
Wait, are you saying that you heard "Ona mówi po angielsku", or "Ona mówi po angielsku po polsku"?
I think the slow audio is fine.
It isn't something that is necessarily a problem; the audio said "Ona mòwi po angielsku i po polsku," but due to it defaulting to slow, I had typed and entered my answer before "po polsku" was said. But I was also not able to hear the "i" before that because it is spoken so softly; I should honestly simply pay more attention to it...
It's better not to think that a preposition 'means' something, there are different meanings depending on the context.
Here we have a very specific construction: "po + an adjective for a language, in a form ending with -u" is used for 'speaking a language'. So it's closest to "in", because you can "speak in English"... but it has nothing to do with let's say "being in prison" :D
Why is it specific? This form of an adjective is not used anywhere else. It's not any of the modern grammatical cases, it's a remnant of the grammar of old Polish.
We can also say that "po polsku" means "Polish-style" or "in a Polish way", because it's also used this way. A popular Christmas (and not only) dish in Poland is "ryba po grecku", which is "Greek-style fish". Apparently the Greeks have nothing to do with it, though.
