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- OK To Drop The Pronoun?
OK To Drop The Pronoun?
In a lot of languages, such as Polish, have sentences where you have to translate the foreign language into English, but the words in the foreign language do not have a pronoun, like you or I, but will mark you incorrect if you translate it without the pronoun that isn't there. For example, let's say I have to translate "Pijesz herbatę?" The correct thing to type is "You drink tea?" but highlighting Pijesz to display the words it means only says "drink", except for the gray "You sg." which means that pijesz is only appropriate if the subject is a singular you. For me, it looks like Pijesz herbatę means "Drink tea?". However, in other ones like "You drink water", it includes the pronoun "Ty" or you, while Drink tea doesn't. Can someone please explain this to me?
10 Comments
You can usually drop the pronoun in Polish, because the form of the verb makes it clear.
You can rarely drop the pronoun in English, because the form of the verb doesn't make it clear.
The object is to translate to and from correct English and Polish. In a similar way, Polish doesn't use articles, but that doesn't mean you can drop them when you translate a sentence into English :)
Polish equivalents of familiar I/we and you - the pronoun can be dropped unless you are emphasizing the subject. The formal you - pan, pani, panstwo never drop the pronoun
He, she, it , them I have usually used proper name, pronoun, no pronoun as my rule of order when to drop this pronoun. I continue omitting this pronoun until there may be confusion if it is continuing being dropped -e.g. I am also referring to someone else and they need to be kept separate.
822
You can drop it in Polish, but you can't in English. In Polish it's possible because verbs conjugate according to persons. For example "to drink" - "pić" in the Present Tense: infinitive "to drink" - pić singular I drink - (ja) piję thou (singular you) drink - (ty) pijesz he/she/it drinks - (on/ona/ono) pije plural we drink - (my) pijemy you (plural) drink - (wy) pijecie they drink - (oni/one) piją In English only in 3rd person singular (he/she/it) add -s ending, in the rest it's infinitive, so you need to add a personal pronoun, because if you say just "drink" you don't say who orwhat does that ;) I think it's a mistake in the course: "pijesz" should be translated as "thou drink" or "singular you drink", because it may be confusing when you learn ;) What's your native language?