"I have only one candy."
Translation:Mam tylko jednego cukierka.
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Why is it jednego, rather than jeden? I'd have expected the accusative here.
"Jednego" is the Accusative version for the masculine animate (see here) - the thing is, that some nouns tend to be grammatically 'animate' for no reason at all.
The people in the comments above yours were arguing whether it should be "Mam jeden cukierek" (treating it as non animate) or "Mam jednego cukierka". One of the links says that Polish language has more than a thousand "exceptions" - that is, words that can be grammatically animate for no reason. Seems that many of them can be treated as both depending on your preference, although it's probably more colloquial to treat them as animate despite what they really denote. For example, the Polish wiktionary only puts the version "cukierek" as Accusative, while the English has both of them.
In this particular example, the animate version "Mam jednego cukierka" sounds a lot more natural to me, even though there's not much logic behind grammatically treating it as animate. This is a difficult issue and unless you find somewhere a list of such 'illogical' masculine animate nouns, I guess the only way is just to observe the language in use.
I typed the Accusative version first time. And was corrected with the Genitive version. Then when it came back I went for the Genitive version, but forgot to correct the jeden to jednego. Anyway, the correct answer this time was different - "mam tylko jeden cukierek". So basically, Duolingo is giving both answers as right. But, I'm pretty sure this was the answer I typed in the first time.
Yes, we accept both versions. If you typed 'jeden cukierek' the first time, it should have been accepted. Sometimes there's just some bug and a correct answer is rejected.
Well, technically both are Accusative versions. It's just that one is 'Nominative-like' (jeden cukierek) and the other is 'Genitive-like' (jednego cukierka).
Or could it be a 'hidden' Partitive, which in Slavic languages is expressed through Genitive?
I'm afraid not. The partitive genitive roughly corresponds to the English 'some' (albeit often not applicable). But you really can't say 'some one candy' or 'one some candy'.
Poprawne jest "Mam tylko jeden cukierek", gdyż 'cukierek' jest nieożywiony.
Mam tylko jednego długopisa? koca? głośnika? topora? widelca? Za to konia, kota, psa, brata, wujka, nauczyciela przyjaciela jest OK. Mylenie biernika z dopełniaczem jest dość powszechne, ale grzecznie proszę, nie uczcie zagranicznych nieprawidłowej formy. Ja wiem, że to może być trudne to wyjaśnić. Btw jako popracie choćby tabelka na wiki https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przypadek Widzę wiatr, nie wiatra.
Wszystko fajnie, świetnie. Ale kolokwializmy powstałe na skutek zapożyczeń (tj mercedes, szampan, banan) i kolokwializacji (ciekawostka balon, cukierek itd. odmieniane żywotnie są najczęściej w przypadku odczuwania więzi emocjonalnej z danym przedmiotem), przydające nieregularności tam, gdzie zasada męskożywotności i męskonieżywotniści jest jasna, uznawane jedynie z racji powszechności ich użycia, osobiście wydają mi się nieuzasadnione. Tzn. w mowie potocznej prawie nic błędem nie jest, ale nie tego chcemy uczyć. Poprawność kolokwializmów i ich społeczna akceptacja wynikające jedynie z ich powszechności, jeszcze tą powszechność zwiększa. Ale to tylko moje zdanie. Pozdrawiam
Faktycznie, mieć jednego długopisa jest trochę niezręcznie i zdecydowanie za mało. Jednakowoż, mam kilku przyjaciół uwielbiających tenis co absolutnie nie przeszkadza im grać w tenisa (ja zdecydowanie wolę grę w tryktraka). Wolę również zjeść banana i zapalić papierosa. Co najciekawsze, robię te rzeczy nadal w bierniku i najzupełniej poprawnie.
Not related to the exercise. Please comment in English otherwise, those who are here to learn polish will not understand the explanations.
Seeing comments in Polish makes me humble... So far to go on this new language journey
Not according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/candy - see meaning 2b.
No; not in this context. "One candy" means "one type of candy" (and would still be seldom-used), not "one piece of candy". Trust a native speaker on this.
This translation is very awkward, at least in US English.
The dictionary says "a piece of such confection", not "a type". To me it means that it's countable.
Anyway, even if that's 'awkward', I don't see another way to teach that in Polish it's something countable.
Look if you say that in the US at least, people will know you're not a native speaker because it's incorrect.
You could easily translate it as "piece of candy".
In England you would not normally call it candy anyway - so it would place you as American. (Or using American terms.) "I have only one sweet" is the UK norm.
Why is "tylko mam " wrong. In English, to me , it would be the same . Maybe in Polish accents are more important
True, in English "I only have" would probably mean the same, but in Polish "tylko" should be before the word it directly refers to, so the numeral "jednego" ("only one" rather than "only have").
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this was very confusing for me until I looked it up in wiktionary, because there is basically the same word in Belarusian but its nom. and gen. declensions are swapped
To probably add to the confusion, "cukierek" is one of those nouns that is commonly treated as animate without a particular reason. We could say that grammatically this should rather be "Mam tylko jeden cukierek", we accept it and some natives will surely say that, but both to me and (clearly) to people who created the course a few years ago, "cukierka" sounds a lot more natural.