44 Comments
Wait, does duzi even exist? The plural forms are duzy and duze in the nominative... (obviously with the dot above the z)
Actually masc personal plural. ;-)
Pies (dog) is animate, and yet there are duże psy (because psy, plural dogs, are not personal, although animate).
This one I don't get. My grammar text says....
"The masculine personal plural adjective ending is -y/-i and the preceding consonant is softened: dobry → dobrzy, ładny → ładni, miły → mili, wielki → wielcy, drogi → drodzy; for more examples, see below."
Swan, Oscar (2008-10-12). Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, Second Edition (Verbs and Essentials of Grammar Series) (Kindle Locations 780-782). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
Ok, but ż (or rz by its other form) is already soft, is it not? And z is actually considered a hard consonant, so here we're actually going in the opposite direction, from soft to hard!!!
so we're going from "duży" to "duzi" (essentially "duź")
ok, from one soft to another, and as immery says below, "ź" ("zi") is the softest it gets, so it's got to be softer than "ż" ("rz").
well "ź" is as soft as our consonants get, but I tried finding few -ży ending adjectives and how they change, and boży, chyży, hoży, ryży, wraży all have masculine singular= masculine personal plural.
So all you have to do is learn this exception. (also please do not learn all those other words, I do not know what exactly they mean , other than Boży, which is God's )
It's rather "hoży"- There is "Hoża" street in Warsaw. "Ryży" means "rudy". "Wraży" is an archaic word and means "wrogi".
I guess I cannot ever rewrite my notes. Mixed chyży and hoży(Edited) And I know more less what they mean, but tried to make a point. I'm a readhead and nobody ever called me "ryża".
People or men meaning humans. Men meaning males is mężczyźni. EDIT: To the ones downvoting me: please, explain why I'm wrong, I want to know my mistakes :).
tell me please, who says in english "The big people"? I suppose, its someone subjective translation. Am i wrong?
It's normal usage. For example you might say to a child "You can't go in that room (where adults are smoking and drinking e.g.), that room is for the big people".
For example John: "Who's the bartender?" Mike: "The big person over there"
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I reckon you could get away with 'important people', given the right context, or perhaps even referring to 'people who are up themselves'?
no, you are mixng things up. Duzi is just about size. "wielcy" is "great" both literally and figuratively, "ważni" is important.
Hmm... I guess 'fat' may be the most probable interpretation, although from the point of view of a child "duży" is someone adult (or at least a teenager).
Does big in this case mean, many, as in a crowd of many people, or big, as in a person with a large build?
Does "big" mean "many"? In Polish "duży" (plural "duzi" or "duże") means "big". But maybe you meant "dużo" (many)?
Ya, I realize that they chose to say duzi means big, but my question is, does duzi mean fat in this phrase?
Without saying animate inanimte, masculine etc, can we be more simple because after a time it really gnaws my brain.
It is duzi not duze because ludzie means people, they are not a thing, they are alive right ? Otherwise i would use duze jabłka, duze pająki etc ?
The problem is, that it's not that simple. Or maybe it actually is?
"Duzi" is masculine personal plural. This plural is used almost exclusively for 'groups of people including at least one man'. As "people" clearly includes at least one man (otherwise it would be "women"), it uses "duzi".
"Duże" is not masculine-personal plural. Which is used for everything else. For apples, for spiders, for boxes, for women... everything that is not 'a group of people including at least one man'.
Just to clarify, "duzi" is used because "ludzie" includes at least one man? Even though the word "ludzie" itself is feminine?
Duży/duża/duże/duzi... are adjectives meaning big, huge. Dużo is an adverb meaning many, much, a lot.
hard to figure out what the audio is even saying, even at slow speed. Sounds like ludzi ludzie which doesn't make sense. Poor quality.
Yes.
The ź sound (spelled just "z" before an "i") is [ʑ] while the ż sound (also spelled "rz") is [ʐ].
Neither of those sounds exists in English, so the two might both sound like [ʒ] to you (the "zh" sound as in "vision, measure").
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_alveolo-palatal_fricative (Polish ź)
versus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_fricative (Polish ż)
versus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_postalveolar_fricative (in English)
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Oh, thanks a lot! Actually I am native German, so we surely have other sounds again. I can hear a subtle difference between the three examples. But I am not sure, if I ever will be able to pronounce it right ;-)
Ż should sound exactly like the second g in Garage. I can't come up with an exact equivalent of ź/zi in German, but I always think of it as a "Mittelding" between ż and the s-sound in Sonne.
Not a word. The 'masculine personal plural' form of an adjective is usually quite different from the other forms. In this case, it's duży/duża/duże, but then you have 'duzi', without ż and softened.
