"Ci ludzie jedzą kaczki."
Translation:These people eat ducks.
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Would "These people are eating duck" also be correct? (I said "these people eat ducks")
If the meaning is meant to be that specific multiple people are currently eating duck meat then the translation above sounds wrong and can lead a native speaker to understand something different. It implies that the people must be eating several ducks and even then in daily english you would still say they are eating duck unless you were for some strange reason conveying the specific meaning that they were eating multiple ducks and not just eating duck meat regardless of the number of ducks.
Either they are now eating multiple ducks, or they generally do eat ducks (and logically if they do it often, that's plural as well).
The sentence rather serves to show the plural of "duck" in Polish than to be perfectly logical. Although a lot of animal meat has specific names (just like beef, pork etc.), duck meat is just "kaczka" = "duck". So "They are eating duck (meat)" = "Oni jedzą kaczkę".
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Nothing wrong with using 'ducks' here in English. Imagine a small child walking in on a feast of people eating roast duck: 'Mom! They're eating ducks!!!'
Which is it though, YOU people are eating ducks or THESE people are eating ducks?
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Ci is only "you" in the dative case, so it definitely not "you people are eating..." (because "you people" would need to be in the nominative case).
There are two forms that coincide: a singular dative „ci“ ~ „to you“ and a plural masculine nominative „ci“ ~ „these“. Here we have „these“ as clearly shown by the context.
What's the difference between "people eat ducks" and "people are eating ducks " in Polish. Would they both be the same?
The app says they are both right but in English they are different things
There is no continuous tense in Polish (and in Slavic languages in general, I believe). One may emphasize „i am eating“ with words like „now, at the moment“ or context like „when you enter“.
Ć/Ci is palatalized C. If anything, then I guess ць. It is not at all like cheese.
Cz = ч, so I guess Czy = чы.
Not at all like cheese? Maybe we pronounce cheese differently… CHEE sounds like Ci to me. What English example would you give for it?
None. English doesn't have sounds like that.
And non-Polish people usually have a lot of problems not only pronouncing Ć, but even perceiving the difference.
Thanks. But the only problem here is that there are no words with чы in Russian. So it is very hard to pronouns anyway).
You cannot have such a combination of letters (ч+ы) in Russian - so this example doesn't help.
Honestly, it's quite hard to hear any difference between "Ci" and "Czy" - would your native ear really perceive it if I mispronounced the one for the other?
Frankly, I cannot imagine any Polish person confusing them. But I do understand it's not that easy for the learners.
Ci = ЧИтал. I can't think of a Cyrillic equivalent for czy, but you might find this video on how to pronounce short i's helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paqsPxjr104 Just add ч before it.
I haven't learned Cyrillic yet, so I can't really help, but I think Jellei will be here soon. I'm sure he has some good examples for you.
In English "duck" is treated as a non-count noun when referred to as a culinary dish. It is the same for all poultry. Those, who designed the program ought to know this.
This still needs fixing. 'These people are eating duck' should be accepted.
So just to make sure I understand correctly: Masculine Plural is "Ci/Tamci mężczyźni są dużi", Feminine Plural is "Te/Tamte kobiety są duże", and Neuter Plural is also "Te/Tamte dzieci są duże"?
Almost. "duzi" doesn't have "ż", it's softened to "zi".
Also we don't really talk about masculine/feminine/neuter plural in Polish. It's (translated literally from Polish): "masculine personal plural" and "not masculine-personal plural".
That's why "dzieci" use the same forms as "kobiety", and those forms will also be used for example for "psy", although "pies" is masculine - but it's not a person.
The correct solution said "the people eat ducks". Ci doesn't necessarily mean The, and I think the sentence should instead be "Ludzie jedzą kaczki". I now see it should be "these people eat ducks", but again, shouldn't it be "te ludzie jedzą kaczki"? Also, doesn't Ci mean Your?
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"ci" can mean "you" (not "your"), in Dative. I don't think Dative has been introduced at this stage.
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"ci" here means "these", it's masculine personal plural. "te" is 'not masculine-personal plural'. Compare: Ci mężczyźni, Te kobiety, Ci ludzie.
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Any form of "ten" (and "ci" is a form of "ten" despite looking completely different) can be translated either as "this/that/the", with "this" being the main answer.
I am very confused between the use of Ci and Te; and also Tamci and tamte. Simple answer out there i believe
Ci/tamci refers only to groups of human males or general mixed-gender groups. Te/tamte refers to animals, inanimate objects, or female-only groups of people.
The same distinction is made in pronouns for 'they' (oni/one), and the past tense of verbs where the subject, or 'doer' of the verb is in the plural (-li/-ły).
Is ludzie a boy word or girl word? Can anyone recommend and good smartphone app for a dictionary that lists all this sort of information?
If you're referring to grammatical gender, it's male, but can refer to people of either gender.
But in English we are apt to say that "These people are eating duck." Duck in this case is a collective noun. The literal translation is unnatural and awkward.
The Polish sentence isn't the most natural either, actually. This is more like 'eating the animals' than 'eating the meat'.
"Ducks" isn't considered weird to say where I'm from... "duck" and "ducks" are interchangeable, I guess. I haven't really thought about it before.
The english part should be corrected. Up to now the have been very right on with english grammar in translation. The program usually has us write it both ways in a lesson...that should be enough to make sure we understanding the polish grammar and spelling.
in french we say on mange du canard, we do not mention how many ducks are on the menu...
"Eating duck" is better English. To say "eating/eat ducks" implies they are eaten alive or raw or smth.
So true! It's like something from Monty Python. I have a vision of members of an aristocratic British hunting party pushing their hounds aside, taking their just shot game from the water and greedily feasting... a kind of zombie duck apocalypse!
"Eating ducks" is a phrase so very rarely used in English that it should not be accepted here; particularly in the context of eating sandwiches and biscuits.
"ludźi" is not a Polish word, and "Czy" makes it "Do people eat ducks?" instead of "These people eat ducks".
Actually, while the direct translation would indeed be "tamci", given how those words actually work, "those" is perfectly acceptable here.
The problem is the singular "duck", which I assume was meant to mean "duck meat"... however the Polish sentence is stranger, and it actually really means plural "ducks", the animals. We may decide to remove this sentence as it proves to be confusing.
Sentence removed from the course as eating plural ducks (animals) rather than duck meat (Ci ludzie jedzą [kaczkę/kacze mięso/mięso kaczki]) proved to bee too confusing.
