24 Comments
Who keeps downvoting comments like this? It's a joke. One can at the most find it "not amusing" which hardly seems a reason to downvote it.
I've seen many comments of youts, jackelliot, which are only a period, and are really downvoted, but with some lingots given.
I assume you have edited it, from something, to a period. Why not delete them, if you consider it was a mistake?
Regards, G2DIPI_true
Yes. I think all the words denoting an amount of something do need Genitive, although I cannot guarantee that.
Would you say it's an exception then when in counting how much of something you have, usually the object is in genitive, but when the number ends in 2/3/4 and is not 12/13/14, the object takes the same case as the numeral?
Widzę cztery koty.
Widzę sześć kotów.
Also... Do you have any resources for polish declensions? I'm having a real tough time. Sometimes I think genitive plural will chop off the suffix, sometimes it adds -ów. Help!
Well, there's always this: http://mowicpopolsku.com/polish-grammar/cases/genitive/ - but as good as it is, most of the neuter Genitive is wrong unfortunately. Generally you can take a look here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16296174 and look through the topics about cases and the resources.
Okay, generally yes: most of them use Genitive, those that you mentioned do not. But the object generally just takes the same case as the numeral, not only in those non-Genitive ones. I mean, if we consider "three cats" as one noun phrase, its Nominative is "trzy koty". And the Nominative of "seven cats" is "siedem kotów". Accusative looks the same as Nominative. But in the other cases, the word 'cats' changes, regardless whether the number is 3 or 7. It changes just as the numeral changes.
Trzy koty (Nom.) Szukam trzech kotów (Gen.) Przyglądam się trzem kotom (Dat.) Widzę trzy koty (Acc.) Rozmawiam z trzema kotami (Instr.) Czytam o trzech kotach (Loc.)
Siedem kotów (Nom.) Szukam siedmiu kotów (Gen.) Przyglądam się siedmiu kotom (Dat.) Widzę siedem kotów (Acc.) Rozmawiam z siedmioma kotami (Instr.) Czytam o siedmiu kotach (Loc.)
Thank you. Teraz rozumiem. In every case but nominative and accusative, cats will be the same case as its numeral. And in nominative or accusative (for most numbers), cats will be genitive. For other numbers, cats will be either nominative or accusative plural respectively.
I'll check out those links.
Is there a difference between ''pół'' and ''połowa''? Could I say ''jem połowę jabłka''?
Yes, it's accepted. I also added "połówkę".
I'd say that "pół" is like "half" while "połowa" is "a half", like more... literal? And "połówka" seems even more so. But that's not a big difference as you see.
Although I note the subtle difference between pół and połowa, it appears pół would be an easier go to for us learners as it is indeclinable... Is that a fair comment?
If it makes sense to treat it as a numeral (0,5 apple), then sure, "pół" seems easier.
It wouldn't make sense in some other sentences, like "Połowa ludzi w biurze jest smutna" (Half of the people in the office are sad), I guess you won't substitute that with "0,5 people" ;)
Does this mean the person only eats half an apple and nothing else? Would there be a different way of saying "I eat half an apple at breakfast" i.e. with my toast and marmalade etc ?
Without a context, we don't really know, there can be a sentence like "apart from, that..." following. Although it's quite possible that it's all the person eats, there isn't any "only" in the sentence.
Also it can be "I am eating right now", and not anything regular.
I translate na as at, which is one of the options in my dictionary. For implies that the half apple is the whole of your breakfast.
I can't guarantee that no one will interpret it differently, but my interpretation of the Polish sentence is that this is indeed the whole of your breakfast.
