"Jesteś dziewczynką?"
Translation:Are you a girl?
22 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dziewczynka#Polish You can click on "show" at declination to see the various endings of this word depending on it being singular or plural or which case it is in.
That is really helpful, especially here at the very beginning of learning the language. Even if "everything I type is always wrong", it is nice to know that there IS a pattern to Polish words.
When your native language is Czech, Polish is kinda easy. Viva la Slavic languages, despite the differencies we still understand ourselves. But because of this I would be finally able to speak in Polish not only understand.
Yeah, I understand Russian a bit and probably Ukrainian too (I can't tell the difference because I only hear Russian similar languages from foreigners here in Czech when they come to shop where I work). It's not like I understand everything they say but it's enough to know what they want or what they are talking about, sadly can't speak it but I'll go for Russian after learning Polish because I think it would be easier for me like that (and I would like to learn Ukrainian and Belarus too if there is a possibility here on Duolingo). I mean after i started to listen more Slovac I found that Polish is easier for me to hear (those languages sounds kind of soft for me). But I need to learn azbuka first Also I just don't understand youngsters these days because it seems they can't grasp the similarity of Slavic languages. I was talking to Polish girl and she looked at me like I am from Mars or what even I understand her pretty good XD
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My opinion is to learn Ukrainian before Russian, if you're starting with the most similar languages first, because its vocabulary is much more West Slavik than Russian is. However, Russian is an international language and is much more common in the world than Ukrainian, with at least 200 million speakers worldwide, so that may be more important to you to learn first. Also Belarusian is a good transition between Ukrainian and Russian, as well as between Polish and Russian. I was shocked at how similar Polish is to Ukrainian. It seems like with Polish, I'm writing Ukrainian in the Roman alphabet sometimes.
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https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dziewczynka#Declension
You posted this for the 100th time in this thread without reading the numerous explanations here.
Just a question, why is the diminutive the default for "girl"? "Dziewczyna" is girl, "dziewczynka" is little girl, just like chłopiec and chłopak
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Dziewczyna can also be a young lady, over 18 years old, legally an adult but usually unmarried, considered younger than kobieta. Dziewczynka is a minor, under 18. Chłopak is the male analogous, but chłopaki is used as a non-masculine-personal colloquialism (te chłopaki) meaning older than the proper masculine-personal chłopcy (ci chłopcy) "boys."
Am I correct, Polish People?
You are rather correct. The perception of this words goes like this:
- dziecko - gender is rather unimportant
- dziewczynka - a girl, a female that is to young to get in relationships
- dziewczyna - a female that can get into relationships with men but is usually unmarried
- kobieta - a female, general term but usually we use it only for a females that are old enough to be married or most of the women in her age are married
With chłopiec,chłopak it goes the analogous way.
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The funny thing I don't understand is why chłopaki are not masculine personal. It sounds funny, like "dudes" or "guys" are not human hahahaha
Why is "you're a girl?" Wrong and ",Are you a girl?" Right? They're the same thing
Well, one is a question (are you...) and the other may not be a real question. But given that the Polish sentence does not start with "Czy", we should accept a potentially surprised "What? You're a girl? I thought you're a boy!".
Added "You're a girl?".
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How do you know if a sentence is just a normal "statement" or a question? Is it just the "?" And the pronunciation or am i missing something?
For yes/no questions, you can start them with "Czy", but you don't have to. It's common to omit it. Then the question mark is the only difference.
In speech, the intonation of a question is different.
But even in English you can have questions without the inversion, i.e. "What, you're a girl?" and that's mostly an intonation thing.