46 Comments
Note to all learners: The stress on kawę should be on the a, not on the ę. In most Polish words, the stress is on the second to last sylable.
Exactly. So far it seems to be mispronounced quite frequently. Note that you would only stress the last syllable if you were to ask a question.
you will sound creepy if you go to Poland and all you can say is, "children, children, children"
But "children" are "dzieci", and "dzieki" is "thanks" written without Polish characters (should be "dzięki").
Cześć, janeb2300. You wrote "word" in your question, so the answer will be a little broad.
In Polish, nouns, adjectives and verbs (only in past tense) have gender. I'll leave verbs apart, because it's very straightforward and it will take a while for us to find here in the course. Adjectives are also easier than nouns, because they are much more regular: feminine, singular, nominative adjectives end in "-a".
Feminine, singular, nominative nouns end in "-a", "-ś" or "-ść". For instance, "ryba" (fish), "wieś" (village) and "miłość" (love) are all feminine in Polish. Not every noun ending with "-a" is feminine though, as "mężczyzna" (man) and "poeta" (poet) are masculine.
Take these rules as a starting point, because nouns and adjectives change regarding gender, number and case. Not always you'll find them in their nominative, singular forms, right? ^^
Nie ma za co, NeridaPeters. Don't be afraid though. The exceptions I talked about in my answer are just a few situations. I'm sure you can learn it. We are here to help :D
I think thats difficult in most languages. It takes drilling to know such things.
Doesn't it make sense that tamtę would agree with kawę? Why do we use tamtą?
But they do agree. The reason the endings are different is that "tamta" is an adjective and "kawa" is a noun, but both agree in gender (feminine), number (singular) and case (accusative).
In this sentence, "tamtą" is not a pronoun, since pronouns can't go next to nouns, but replace them. In "tamtą kawę", "tamtą" is, indeed, a demonstrative adjective or demonstrative determiner, not a demonstrative pronoun.
Is there a duolingo lesson to learn this? I honestly don't even know what case means. It would help to have a basic grammar lesson...
Well, consider reading this:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish#English
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41495047_A_Grammar_of_contemporary_Polish
Let me rephrase my comment, DalmoMendonca. Yes, "tamta" is a demonstrative pronoun, but it works syntactically and morphologically as an adjective. Access this site http://lebada.ddns.net:50023/polish/ or any other resource for polish and compare the endings of adjectives, nouns and pronouns (demonstrative, possessive, interrogative and so on). It would be to many tables for me to post here in one comment. I'll take a look at how to do it here at the forum in a tidy way. I'm sure it'll be fun comparing the tables though. You'll understand why we can consider "tamta" as an adjective.
I noticed that a native corrected the accusative form of "tamta" they said that it should be "tamtę" because it is the accusative form yet a lot of Polish speakers say it wrong. Anyone can clarify for this situation?
Część, nnaruto25. I'm not sure if it was explained here in the lessons, but in fact "ą" is the adjectival accusative feminine ending and "ę" is the noun accusative feminine ending. Do you see? It also depends on the part of speech the word belongs to.
Ok, I know this topic went cold. Still it is not clear to me why it is not "Lubię tamtę kawę" instead of "Lubię tamtą kawę". The link HelioLBS cited is not working right now, does any one have another reference? I just had a correct answer with the phrase: "Ona lubię tamtę zupę", isn't it the same?
your supposedly "correct" sentence should be "ona lubi tamtĄ zupę".
accusative form of tamta is "tamtą". https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/tamten
the word "tamtę" does not exist.
you probably mixed it with "tę". https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/ten#pl
Thanks a lot! It was very helpful. The english version of wiktionary doesn't have the word "tamten" with declinations. To use the polish version is a great tip. :)
764
you can use this to remember: the first word ends in ą and the second ends in ę – so the endings are in alphabetical order
I learn Polish through English (in this app) but I am not English. I don't understand why "I like this coffee" should be wrong. Why does it have to be "that"?
Generally you should remember that "ten" (and its forms) translate to "this", and "tamten" (and its forms, including 'tamtą', which is feminine Accusative) translate to "that". These are direct translations.
Polish and English have different notions of... 'closeness'. Polish uses ten/ten/tamten, English uses this/that/that. So 'ten' and 'that' overlap, and they could be also translated this way. However, "tamtą" is already that far, that it really has to be translated as "that".
I learned "this" and "that" in simple way that seemed to work, to, ta, ten are short.. So in my head, closer. Tamta, tamto, tamten etc are longer words so further away. Like imagine pointing at "this" close to you and "that" further away. Just a weird thing that helped me (this is for original comment btw)
I am learning polish with this app for few days. Now I am familiar with some words and I would like to learn the way to pronounce and communicate. If watching polish movies and news helps me improving that way, suggest me some mobile apps where I can watch polish movies and news, like HOTSTAR and JIOTV where I can watch Indian movies and news, Thanks !
is it tamta because kawe was originally kawa but has ending changed to match lubie? keyboard doesnt have accented letters
Well... yes. "lubić" takes Accusative, Accusative form of the noun phrase "tamta kawa" is "tamtą kawę".
I'd really advise to use a keyboard with Polish characters. If your main keyboard is English/American, then Polish has everything that you need for English + everything that you need for Polish.
"tamtą" has to be "that".
As Polish "ten/ten/tamten" (here: tę/tę/tamtą) equals "this/that/that", you see that "tamtą" is really the 'furthest' option and has to be translated to "that".
Why is kawę instead of kawą?? Is it because it functions as an accusative form? So how can I differentiate accusative and instrumental form in this case? thanks!
Yes, "kawę" is Accusative. Generally, you have to remember what verb and preposition takes which case... in an early stage of the course, until some moment, every verb takes Accusative apart from "być" (to be). Accusative is the most common case, needed by numerous verbs, including "lubić" (to like).
ok, got it. That means i really needs to practise a lot more to get used to which verb comes with which forms? Thank you.
