"Ten mężczyzna, ta kobieta, to dziecko"

Translation: This man, this woman, this child

[DmitryReve]

Interestingly, in Russian words ta & to mean that, not this.

[frank.dolecki]

Is there a difference on how you use ten, ta, and to? If there isn't, why not just say Ten...ten...ten, or ta...ta...ta?

[Jellei]

Of course there is. "ten" is for describing masculine nouns, "ta" for feminine ones, and "to" for neuter.

[Tracy403982]

Ten is used in masculine,ta is used in femine,to is for neutral

[Will261934]

Yeah but why? They all mean the same thing

[Jellei]

Well... because grammar? Polish words have many forms which all have to match grammatically.

[MeireMartyniak]

Why we use tamta for woman and I use it with ryba?

[prokhd]

Because "ryba" is feminine

[MeireMartyniak]

Thank you prokhd! For us, in Brazil, ryba is male. This is a big confusion!

[Tracy403982]

Its feminine because it ends with an" A"

[Izolda_Lvovna]

After having typing this exact phrase 2-3 times per lesson for 5 levels, %$#@? $0, how much do I hate this particular set of phonemes now

[pragnanz.eu]

How do we distinguish between this and that? It accepts "This man, that woman and this child". But surely there needs to be a way to distinguish this and that?

[SpaceC]

I'm a native polish speaker. I am not sure, but if i were to say"that man, that woman, that child" i would say "tamten mężczyzna, tamta kobieta, tamto dziecko". Ten/ta/to generally means this.

[immery]

Our interpretation of to/tamto and English view of this/that are different.

Polish see distance: to, to, tamto
English see distance :this, that, that

Which leads to the course accepting translation to=that in most sentences

[Arnoldpitt]

In English 'this man , woman and child' is more normal than repeating this

[prokhd]

Why 'this kid' is not a correct form? Only 'this child'

[Viersch]

report it

[isaacishumble]

Kid works

[prokhd]

And here again kid doesn't works in the same sentense: http://s017.radikal.ru/i400/1512/cb/265fa55ddf0f.png

[Ken751098]

The best evet question that I have seen.

[AyelenBieb1]

Me tiene harta el myzcyzna siempre mal!!

[PatriceLeB9]

Ok, third time, same question, i have given correct answer ( matches what they're telling me) but saying it is incorrect and deducting my hearts, then the same question is asked over again with same results. Confused

[alik1989]

A report that matches the time of your comment says "meczyczna", which is quite far from the correct spelling, I'm afraid.

[DanielMass945672]

I am getting this right, but it keeps telling me I'm wrong.

[Jellei]

If you wrote here what your answer was, we could say something about it.

[a2zRo]

Is there a way to know if a word is feminine, masculine or neutral? Or is it like German that does not have a specific rule?

[Jellei]

You look at the basic, Nominative form of the noun.

If it ends with a consonant, it's probably masculine.

If it ends with -a, it's probably feminine.

If it ends with -o, -ę, -um, it's neuter.

There will be exceptions (like here, "mężczyzna" is masculine), they will be even among common words, but generally the above should be your first thought.