"You speak Polish."
Translation:Mówicie po polsku.
25 Comments
In English, the language being spoken is a noun which forms the direct object of the verb "speak." This is not the case in Polish, where the language spoken is described by an adjective. The preposition "po" in this case serves the function of the English "-ly."
Like an adverb that modifies the verb? Not an adjective which modifies nouns.
Right. "Polsku" by itself is an adjective, and "po" allows it to apply to a verb. So "po polsku" here indicates "in a Polish manner."
(Technically, "polski" would be normally be "polskiemu" in the dative case, but it takes a different form in this particular set phrase.)
It depends if 'you' is singular or plural.
Singular: 'Mówisz po polsku.''
Plural: 'Mówicie po polsku.'
In Polish, the conjugation of "mówić" is different in the two cases.
"Mówisz" = you (singular) speak.
"Mówicie" = you (plural) speak.
If you mean in the English sentence, then you cannot know without context. Duolingo accepts both 'mówisz' and 'mówicie' when no context is given for "you speak"
"Polski" is the masculine nominative case, so you'd use it to express that the (masculine) sentence subject is Polish. For example, "Polski mężczyzna mówi po angielsku." A Polish man is speaking English.
As a noun, "polski" is also the name of the Polish language.
The name of Polish language is polszczyzna. Polski is adjective. "Język polski" is the type of language. Short form "polski" is used by students at school, the same with e.g. "angielski".
The same is with name of our country: Polska is adjective. It is short form of Rzeczpospolita Polska. Of course both short and long forms are official.
There are several patterns, but you will learn in time. For "mówić" it's as following:
I speak = (ja) mówię; you (sg.) speak = (ty) mówisz; he/she/it speaks = (on/ona/ono) mówi; we speak = (my) mówimy; you (pl.) speak = (wy) mówicie; they speak = (oni/one) mówią
"Mówię" (I'm assuming you mean "mowię;" if you said "mówie," that's not a thing) is the first person conjugation of "mówić." To go with the formal second-person "pan," you use the third-person conjugation "mówi."
All the answers are uncorrect for me. I amm always wrong. So they keep on reasking me the question
Usually when users report such a problem, it means that they didn't notice that the exercise is "check all the correct answers". Almost any sentence with "you" will have at least two equally correct answers and you have to check all of them.
There is a error on this question. None of the answers are being flagged as correct.
For 99% the case is that there are two correct sentences, the exercise is to "check all the correct answers". In this case, it is "Mówisz po polsku" (singular you) and "Mówicie po polsku" (plural you).
"Pan mówi po polsku" was not accepted. Do we ever practice the formal mood/address?
Added now. This is one of the biggest problems with the current version of the course, that not only it teaches very little of Formal You, but mostly it doesn't even accept formal versions. It's one of the things we're fixing now when creating Tree 2.0.
I can add Formal versions where I'm asked, but the idea of doing it everywhere in the current tree is rather impossible, and people ask for it quite seldom (also because they weren't taught Formal You properly).
