"Your son believes this farmer."

Translation: Wasz syn wierzy temu rolnikowi.

[deletesliving]

Temu? TEMU!?

[alik1989]

Dative masculine singular of ten. You'll find it here in this declension table.

[Nico515253]

This made me laugh - we all feel like this sometimes. As they say in Italian, 'Coraggio!'

[Arnoldpitt]

Is rolnikowi accusative singular? If not, what is it and why?

[alik1989]

The verb wierzyć requires the dative case.

[Gali_VB]

Dlaczego rolnikowi, a nie rolniku?:(

[alik1989]

If a masculine noun ends in a consonant, then its dative ending will be -owi. The only exceptions are:

bóg, brat, chłopiec, chłop, czart, czort, diabeł, kat, ksiądz, ojciec, pan, pop, kot, lew, pies, orzeł, osioł, łeb, świat.

Those in cursive can also get an -owi ending in some contexts.

[Jellei]

I can imagine someone saying "rolniku" here, but I'm afraid the right ending is -owi.

[Ubeogesh]

Audio button doesn't work here

[Jellei]

This very discussion is for the English->Polish translation exercise and there are no audio files for the English sentences...

[Ubeogesh]

sorry i didn't know this nuance

this is the first time i encountered this exercise\discussion so I wanted to hear it; usually i can do it for english->polish but not this time

[SteinRuben]

Any logical explanation to why wierzyć implies use of dative? Is it because the concept of belief is abstract, making temu rolnikowi an indirect object (of the son's belief in this case)?

[alik1989]

It's probably unrelated to the abstractness, since there are other verbs like "to give" that don't fit this category, but still require the dative.

If you believe a person, that person is not affected directly by this action, they are just a passive receiver of your belief, so to speak. In English there's the term "to give credence to" which should help you remember that it's dative.

Btw, in German it's also dative for this verb and therefore (I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure) in Old English as well.