"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.
It’s quite close, yes. One little difference is that in Polish it kind of ends with the sound of ł.
I know it's been 3 years, but as a french, it sounds like 'są' is closer to 'sans' than 'sont' in french, a bit more nasal
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
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In my language the horse and the mouse are masculine however in polish they are feminine words so I can't get them right
The horse is in fact masculine. With mouse you're right, it's feminine although looks masculine.
I thought "big" here was instrumental, not nominative. Is "big" in: "Horses are big animals." instrumental, though? (because according to Duolingo, "little" in: "I am a little boy" is instrumental). So I thought the right translation was: "Konie są dużami"
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
Why is "Konie są dużi" wrong? I see that koń is a masculine noun, so I chose the virile plural declined form of duże. When should we be using the virile plural? Thank you!
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
Well, the lack of diacritics doesn't get your answer marked incorrect.
And you shouldn't really treat them as accents, but as separate letters, each representing different sounds than their non-diacritical counterparts.
Could this ever be in the instrumental case given the "to be" verb is used?
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
why doesn't konie change in the accusative? is it because of that rule about masculine nouns not changing from nominative to accusative? does this rule apply to plurals?
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.
How can you identify that konie is a nonvirile noun? Wiktionary only lists it as masculine.
Nonvirile means that it's not a noun for 'a group with at least one man'. So generally this should be pretty logical.