"No, he is not a dog."
Translation:Nie, on nie jest psem.
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Would "Nie, on to nie pies." be correct, or am I wrong on the translation? My answer was not accepted.
In "X is Y" sentences (doesn't matter that Y is negated), if X is a personal pronoun, the only option that works well is X + a form of 'być' + Y in Instrumental.
Your structure would work in many contexts: "Nie, tygrys to nie pies" (No, tiger is not a dog), but not with pronouns.
Fun fact as a side note about Polish slang: "pies" is also a derogatory term for a policeman.
Someone above asked a very similar question, about "Nie, on to nie pies". I answered:
"In "X is Y" sentences (doesn't matter that Y is negated), if X is a personal pronoun, the only option that works well is X + a form of 'być' + Y in Instrumental.
Your structure would work in many contexts: "Nie, tygrys to nie pies" (No, tiger is not a dog), but not with pronouns."
Now, with your sentence there's another problem - the placement of negation. Even if you could use the "X to Y" construction here, you have to negate Y, and not "to".
For more information you can take a look here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
It's a lot, but you can take it part by part :) The specific problem here is described in Part 2.
i dont have a question but i want to thank you Jellei. everytime i have a question i look here and you always have a comprehensive explenation. you helped me a lot. ps, sorry for bad english (it's my third language)
What is the difference between Nie, on nie jest pies and nie, on nie jest psem?
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The first one is incorrect, as in Polish the verb 'być' must be followed by a noun in an Intrumental case.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28545847 This article has everything that came to my mind that you need to know about negations. But wasn't what you meant a difference between "Adam to nie lekarz" and "Adam nie jest lekarzem"? In the first one, you kinda have an invisible 'jest' anyway: "Adam to nie (jest) lekarz".
I'm confused about the word order for the second "nie." Why won't "Nie, on jest nie psem" work?
"Nie" is put before the word you want to negate. If put before the noun, it tends to merge with it, making it (at least to me) sound like he is a not-dog or an anti-dog" which makes him some kind of a really weird fiction character.
Compare:
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Oni nie są ludźmi - They aren't human.
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Oni są nieludźmi - They are inhumans.
The natural word order:
it is - jest
it is not - nie jest
Yes, it is a dog - Tak, jest psem
No, it is not a dog - Nie, nie jest psem
The noun "pies" is masculine, so it is referred to as "on",
but it cannot be referred to as he, but rather it in English.
Dogs can be referred to as he or she, especially if you know their name.
please explain why in this sentence, for example, we use psem and not pies?
I believe psem is the instrumental case for pies, so its changed to psem instead piesem for some reason,.
Many nouns where the final vowel is "ie" see it dropped in the Instrumental. Chłopiec -> Chłopcem is another.
I guess it's a possible translation, even if technically it doesn't translate "he". Let's add it.
No, he not is dog. Is this how it works for other "Not his/her/it" sentences? Or only a select few
Basically you need to negate the whole idea of 'being a dog', not just 'a dog'. Otherwise it would be like saying that he's a 'not-dog', an 'undog' or something like that.
If you think about how "is not" = "isn't" you can easily see that in English the negation is also on the verb, not the noun. Even if English has "not" after the verb.
You may want to read this: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28545847
tl;dr: "Only Accusative changes its case to Genitive. The other cases just stay the same".