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- "W lipcu odwiedzamy siostrę."
31 Comments
When I say odwiedzam siostrę it is clear that I am talking about somebody's sister, usually my sister, not just a sister.That sounds really weird !
True. I changed it to my sister. We still have some similar sentences that need to be fixed, though.
So, does saying it without a pronoun like "our" or "my" in this context happen often in Polish?
Isn't it a pretty inaccurate translation in that case? Wouldn't you need "nasze siostrę"?
In Polish we often leave "naszą" out. It is implied. also it would be "naszą siostrę" = our sister or "nasze siostry" our sisters.
1014
This is so in all Slavic languages, we rarely use possessive pronouns, only in specific situations.
This sentence is very understandable from the context that it is 1st person plural without "our" referring to "odwiedzamy".
Ok regarding 'our' being implicity in the context, but I would still recommend against omitting 'naszą' here, since we only have a sentence in Duolingo, therefore there is no context.
Lack of context is a context by itself in such a sentence: if there isn't anything that shows that this is 'someone else's sister', then it means that this is the subject of the sentence's sister.
Could it also mean my/your/his/her sister, since there's no personal pronoun to specify?
Couldn't "We visit a sister" be a correct translation as well? Without saying "our sister" I thought it could be a nun or religious sister.
I learned elsewhere that after w follows accusative. Why then is it genetive here?
Actually mostly it's Locative and it is Locative here. But it does depend on the function of 'w'. English wiktionary states three most important meanings:
- (+ locative) in
- (+ accusative) into, in
- (+ accusative) on (time/date)
For example, to differentiate between two first ones: if something is literally inside the wall, it's "w ścianie". If you hit the wall, that's "w ścianę". Your brain is in(side) your head, that is "w głowie". If you hit yourself on the head, that's "w głowę".
when is the 'e' dropped from 'we' and when is it necessary?- I don't think I have had any information about that.
- 716
w only becomes we when the next word starts with a combination of consonants that would make adding w awkward. Wiktionary gives two examples: words starting with wl and wr.
the gentleman`s accent is poor plus his voice fades and i cannot hear what he says, w lipcu is difficult to understand google translate cannot understand what he says.
I know "swoja" has not been explained in the course yet, but...if we really meant: "We visit Our sister in July.", shouldn't we say then (as long as we don't want to use "naszą"): "W lipcu odwiedzamy Swoją siostrę"? Even Google Translate translates "W lipcu odwiedzamy siostrę" as "We visit My sister in July."
"swoją" is an accepted alternative to "naszą" in the EN->PL direction, as is the null case.
It is not always possible to rely on GT for the more detailed nuances.
Thank you! Then, if I am not mistaken: "W lipcu odwiedzamy siostrę." could (depending, of course, on the context) perfectly be translated into: " We visit my sister in Luly.". I think I can conclude that also from other comments. And I completely agree with what yoy say bout GT, of course.
"We visit my sister in July" is an accepted answer in the PL->EN direction.
If the possessive pronoun is omitted, the object is assumed to belong to the grammatical subject, which is 'we'. I guess 'my sister' is kind of permissible, since 'my' is a subset of 'our'.
