"Nie jestem psem, jestem kotem."
Translation:I am not a dog, I am a cat.
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(Lolcat speech) I arz catz, c? I iz NOT weareeng costyoom. I can haz cheezberger plz?
(English) I'm a cat, see? I am NOT wearing a costume. Can I have a cheeseburger please?
Juat wait until you get to the later lessons where you'll learn how to tell everyone that you have new underpants! :P
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Yes. A sentence like this is also correct: "Jestem nie psem, ale kotem", but then the noun is negated and the meaning is slightly different ("It's not a dog who I am, but a cat").
When do I use "kotem" instead of "kot"? or "psem" instead of "psa" or pies? Or does another lesson describe that in notes? If not which one?
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"Kot" and "pies" are in Nominative case and "kotem" and "psem" are in Instrumental. "Psa" is Genitive. Although it might seem bit strange for a non-native speaker, we use Instrumental case with verb być (to be) talking for example about your/someone else's job/nationality/identity. There is some explanation about Instrumental case here: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/pl/Defining.
Well, you added another "No" to your translation. "Nie, nie jestem psem, jestem kotem".
I just did the chapter on negations where the presence of nie changes the entire case of the sentence into a different case. Why doesn't that seem to be happening here? Both psem And kotem seem to be in the same case.
The only situation when negation changes the case (but a very common situation), is when a verb that took a direct object in Accusative gets negated - it takes Genitive instead.
Other cases (like here you have Instrumental) stay unchanged.
You can read more about it here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28545847
