23 Comments
Why don't I use genitive case for negation "Lew nie jest tygrysa"? Why is it still instrumental case?
The genitive for negation works only with accusative, and not after prepositions.
1172
I am not Polish, but it appears that the instrumental takes precedence over the genitive.
Can someone link me a useful website that shows how to conjugate nouns like this? I don't know whether to use Tygrys, Tygrysem, etc. I'm not used to a language where verbs change so I need to learn these.
Have a look here, mostly at the part about cases of course.
This website is quite good for learning grammar.
Why does 'nie' come before 'jest' here, but in another example, it came after?
You need to point that example, because in Polish nie is most often before verb. Only if you clearly want to negate other word. (Jesteś nie chłopcem , lecz mężczyzną- You are not a boy, but a man)
But I think you may think about sentence like
Lew to nie (jest) tygrys.
There is no verb here. (if jest is ommitted), and you put "nie" after to.
The example is "Kawa to nie śniadanie". I just got it and copy pasted it. To me this word order sound more natural but I've only been learning Polish for a day :P
Polish has no articles. It could be "the" or "a", but "a" makes more sense.
- 1315
One can only report sentences when doing the lesson and getting asked those sentences.
I tested out of most of the tree, so I haven't seen this sentence before.
To say "You are a lion, not a tiger", would "Jesteś lewsem, nie tygrysem" be correct? Dziękuję
Hahaha well I'm afraid that 'lewsem' is so far from the correct word that quite possibly people wouldn't even understand. I like the word, though :D
The Instrumental of "lew" is "lwem". Yeah, I guess it's less regular than usual.
When I typed "jest tygrysem", it came up with translation "he is a tiger". So I choose "tygrys". And it was wrong answer, damn hahaha
The correct answers are: "Lew nie jest tygrysem" and "Lew to nie tygrys".
what is the difference exactly between "tygrys" and "tygrysem"? why not "lew nie jest tygysem"?
Apart from a typo (tygRysem), your sentence is fine.
"tygrys" is Nominative, "tygrysem" is Instrumental.
The accepted options here are "Lew to nie tygrys" and "Lew nie jest tygrysem".
More info here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
