"I am drinking this tea."
Translation:Piję tę herbatę.
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
If all natives make the 'tę -tą' mistakes then surely this is the new way polish is spoken officially and should be taught to non natives, same as not pronouncing the 'ę' at the end of words? I mean PROPER proper standardised English supposed to sound the 'k' in 'knife' but NO ONE bar a few dialects in Scots English would pronounce it as such and certainly not teach it to a non native as that would be cruel. If I use 'tę', every single pole I speak to corrects me 'tą, Ashu tą" I feel like I'm learning some an archaic version of polish if I voice 'tę'. Any advice?
This is not a case of "most Poles always say it like that", but a case of " some Poles often make this mistake". It is considered acceptable in colloquial speech.
are you sure you don't mix cases? tę herbatę, tą herbatą. Or maybe it is a regional thing, and people in place you live are more used to "tą" as accusative.
It is like saying "ain't" is now correct form.
The problem with language is that it's used to communicate. People don't serve the language, is the other way around. For example in Spanish you see the Royal academy change things to accommodate the changes in language. How often does a mistake considered one until it becomes part is the language? Another example, since you were thinking about offending people, who would understand Canterbury Tales if you read it in the original? Do you remember it? How Janet Peole that went though it on school remember it? Language is a tool, if someone else didn't understand tą from tę then it makes sense to adapt. But when they're used to the phonemic flow, just do it.
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The school and university are supposed to teach the normative language. When what is spoken by lots of people will be accepted as a norm, then it will be taught. In other languages there are also some typical mistakes made by native speakers, and that doesn't mean that are not mistakes any more.
No no no... Tę and tamtą are both demonstrative pronouns. Most other pronouns, like possessive swoją also have the accusative -ą ending. So that can't be it.
Many centuries ago all accusative endings of pronouns used to be -ę (moję, twoję, swoję, tamtę...) with ją being the only exception. In modern Polish those endings changed, with tę being a remnant of the old times.
EDIT: I meant feminine pronouns, of course
If forgot to mention that we are talking about feminine pronouns and feminine adjectives, only. Then it's as you said, with tę being the only exception. As discussed previously, using tą instead of tę is ok in colloquial speech, but unacceptable in any form of writing (except for informal chats on the internet, perhaps).
My wife is polish, she is from opole, and she told me that ta (a with a tail) IS indeed gramatically correct, she said that you can use either one.. in fact she learned the ta (a with a tail) way in school, she went to school in the 1980's. If children are learning it that way in poland at school then im sorry but to say that it is the wrong way when we are trying to learn a language is confusing, my wife was quite miffed when i told her. She was also offended by Jellei's comment about people who aren't that well educated, she is very well educated as are all of her family and friends, and they use the ta (with a tail) way in everday speech, it is not just acceptable it is grammatically correct!!
As I wrote, I didn't want to offend anyone. And it's not like educated people make no mistakes.
Anyway, no - I don't believe I've seen any linguist call "tą" a grammatically correct Accusative version. It's "acceptable in speech".
https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/t%C4%99
https://sjp.pwn.pl/poradnia/haslo/te-czy-ta;2227.html
http://zapiskiredaktora.blox.pl/2011/04/Ta-czy-te.html
I can see how one could argue that it's common enough to be accepted. I wouldn't bat an eye if you said it. But this is a language course, a course based on writing the exact answers. We don't want a situation when someone corrects our learners' grammar, grammar that we taught in this course.
I'd say it's gradually leaving the 'colloquial' area and becoming more common and acceptable in general speech. But it still looks wrong when written down, at least to me.
Regarding the 'aberration': The -ę ending used to be the standard accusative declension of all feminine pronouns in the past, but almost all of those endings got gradually replaced by -ą (in some older Bible translations you can still find words like swoję, which don't exist in modern Polish). So, tę, is sort of the last remnant of the old inflectional paradigm.
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The choice of Pije te herbate, and Pije te herbate (I cant type accents). I chose Pije te herbate, but was incirrect because it was Pije te herbate. The choices were identical.
Tutaj możesz sobie poczytać, dlaczego nie akceptujemy "Piję tą herbatę":
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/20183353?comment_id=43894611
It's not, it's in the "Demonstrative pronouns" module.
Given that you're level 23, I understand your strengthening skills/getting them to a higher crown level, so you already took "Demonstrative pronouns" a long time ago, I presume. I believe that given that you already encountered all the words, the lesson algorithm could give you this sentence because "Basic 1" teaches the word "piję" and this is a sentence with "piję" for which you knew all the words anyway.