"Psy jedzą jabłka."

Translation: The dogs are eating apples.

[alantrousers]

I think, but am not 100% sure, that this can be translated in eight different ways, all of them correct:

Dogs eat apples.
The dogs eat apples.
The dogs eat the apples.
Dogs eat the apples.
The dogs are eating the apples.
The dogs are eating apples.
Dogs are eating apples.
Dogs are eating the apples.

[deactivated user]

Yes, it does.

[alantrousers]

Thought so. This must make English tricky for Polish people, I'd have thought.

[foo__bar]

Psi jedu jabuke - the same sentence in Serbian, as many translations to English. But, you could derive from the context how you should translate it. Now, continuos or not isn't a problem, since we have verbal aspects - "jesti" is uncomplete, so "Jedem" usualy means "I am eating", except in cases like "Jedem ribu", where it would usualy translate to "I eat fish". Articles are much trickier though :D

[AliT.Firefly]

I've taught quite a few international students, at a very high level of English, and discovered that not only can you tell when someone's writing in their second language (usually), you can also make a good guess what their first language is from the problems they have. Polish students find articles sheer hell. (Can't blame them). Chinese students have trouble with parts of speech (death/dead/dies - sorry that's just the example I remember). I have barely any Polish and no Chinese at all, but I learn a bit about the languages from the problems they generate...

[AspiroFremor]

It's funny but this can be translated in 16 ways. "Dogs eat apples" and so on, AND "Apples eat dogs" and so on. This example is so unreasonable that it sounds only one way to the Polish ear, but nonetheless is gramatically correct. You could hear it sounding more natural when comparing things, eg. "Dogs eat apples and cats eat pears." - "Jabłka jedzą psy, a gruszki jedzą koty." The order of the first clause would suggest carnivorous apples, but it's of course not the intended meaning. "Psy jedzą jabłka, a koty jedzą gruszki." means exactly the same thing.

[Jellei]

Yeah, theoretically that could work. More visible if you use a feminine noun: "Psy piją wodę"/"Wodę piją psy". But that's of course pretty strange and very rare, means more like "OK, so all those animals drinking milk over there are cats, but the ones drinking water are dogs".

[marbleox]

Maybe more than double that if it's spoken as a question "Do dogs eat apples?", "Are the dogs eating the apples", etc.

[foo__bar]

I never saw a dog that eats apples, but I did have a dog that ate plums :D

[Anton_Slavik]

Dogs eat everything, including wood and plastic. Atleast my 2 wiener dogs did.

[ArtemStepa1]

Crazy dogs.

[Yan825097]

I'm Ukrainian, but it's quite interesting to learn polish from the perspective of English language (which i know good enough)

[David20107]

Some dogs don't eat apples. Only dog can food or some other food like walnuts.

[btwinch]

I've had two dogs so far that like or have liked to eat apples

[lonkl]

I didn't know the people that made Gangnam Style ate apples!

[Jellei]

Isn't it just one guy? Cause that would be "Psy je jabłka" ;)

[Ondra761475]

Apparently you can't make it These dogs

[Jellei]

No, because "these" is your own addition to the sentence.

[Aleks778302]

Jedzą is hard to understand in my opinion, there's "je" "Jedza" "Jest?" "jestem" I'm really confused, they all start with "je"

[alik1989]

Let's assume for a moment that they all sound the same. None of those words you listed fit this sentence grammatically, as they are all singular conjugations.

[JerryMcCarthy99]

Does not your own native language have words of completely different meaning starting with the same two letters?