"Horses are big."
Translation:Konie są duże.
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Są sounds just like sont in French, right? I'm trying to find connections to make it easier to learn.
Not exactly the same sounds but that’s a pretty close approximation. Polish są in IPA would be something like [sɔ̃w̃], while French sont [sɔ̃].
Dzięki! It seems I still have lots to learn about Polish pronunciation.
In that case it would be "duzi", because "mężczyźni" is masculine personal plural.
The ending of adjectives which are masculine personal plural (ie. a group containing at least one male person) is -i with the preceding consonant being "softened" (in that case "ż" becomes "ź", which is written just "z" before the letter "i"), and the ending of other plural adjectives is -e.
if you like reading grammar tables, you can look here http://grzegorj.interiowo.pl/gram/gram00.html
Even if that was correct, the right form would be "dużymi".
What you describe happens for noun phrases ("Horses are big animals" is indeed "Konie są dużymi zwierzętami") but if you have just an adjective on its own, it stays in the case of the rest of the sentence, so usually Nominative ("Konie są duże").
You can read more about it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
Virile plural is a prettier name for what we call here "masculine personal plural". This means that it's used for masculine words for people. "koń" is masculine, true, but it's not a person, so it still goes to the non-virile category.
Besides, the right form is "duzi". The virile adjectives usually look quite different than the other forms, they are kinda softened, so "-ży" changes to "-zi".
No. Think about "to" as something that kiiinda works like a "=" sign. You can say "Horses = big animals", but not "Horses = big".
More info here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
Instrumental is used after "to be", but only for noun phrases. Not for adjectives on their own.
So "Horses are big animals" would take Instrumental ("Konie są dużymi zwierzętami"). But this sentence wouldn't.
More info here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
In plural there are only two genders, virile (masculine personal) and nonvirile (everything else). For nonvirile nouns like konie the accusative plural is the same as the nominative plural.
However, that doesn't matter in this sentence anyway, as konie is the subject of the sentence and therefore takes nominative.