20 Comments
Big as a euphemism for fat? Would a Pole say this sentence or it's just merely a test of concepts for us learners? :)
It's a normal Polish sentence. Here we call children small or big to refer to their age (or perhaps some other trait associated with it, like heigth or skills).
I put "this child is gargantuan, however despite my overwhelmingly obvious exaggeration, the simultaneous sarcasm distributed sill reconciled my answer as incorrect, I yam veryy confused.
So, could I say, "To jest duże dziecko" to say "This is a big child" or is that grammatically incorrect?
is duze in the accusative or nominative here? I feel like it should be nominative but the help list accusative first. Are they just the same word?
The forms are identical, as "dziecko" is neuter. The hints aren't that great to always put the right one first.
It's Nominative, because in an "X is Y" sentence, if Y is just an adjective, it's Nominative. And if it's a noun phrase, it's Instrumental.
I am confused about the double use of to. a sentence or two before to was used for that is Here you use both to and jest.
In an "X is Y" sentence, you can only use the "to" construction, if both X and Y are noun phrases. As here Y is just an adjective, you can only go with "jest".
You may think about "to" as something kinda similar to "=". Let's say that one can imagine "this child = a big child", but not really "this child = big".
As for the first (or rather here: the only one) use of "to", it's a neuter determiner. Better to think about it as a completely different word that just happens to look identical.
It's not a translation. You changed the subject from the noun phrase "this child" to the dummy pronoun "this".
Well, yes, I understand this and I get why it should not be correct for Duolingo, reason why I did not report. But the message is the same, no? I mean, I can translate like this in a Polish to English dubbing for lip syncing reasons, for example?
OK, "It's not a translation" was clearly an overstatement ;)
Yes, the message is the same in most contexts. But in theory "This is a big child" can be said in a context where your interlocutor didn't even know that it's a child.
But most importantly, we really don't want to allow such changes of the grammatical subject :)
"this child is tall"; why not? (i have the feeling there is no issue to translate "duży" by "grand" in French... which is often translate to "tall" in English when speaking e.g. about someone; what i'm missing. Because... Big Ben is "gros" not "grand" right? ;$ )
Well, "tall" is "wysokie". Even if it can mean the same in some contexts, it's still a different adjective.
Besides, this sentence (at least to me) is quite likely to refer to the age.
