"Moi synowie, moje córki"

Translation: My sons, my daughters

[94BlueLane]

How does this translate? I am using my mobile and it doesn't show the translations sometimes.

[EiEi.]

My sons, my daughters

[KyleB630081]

I am always reluctant to say "daughter" in Polish because of its similar sound to a not-so-pleasant word. Don't want to unintentionally offend someone.

[CalvinTyler]

Hey What is the bad word?... Yknow.. to make sure I don't get it wrong hehe

[Jellei]

I remember I discussed it with someone (and I was totally surprised, like 'what do you mean') and it turned out that the user saw some similarity to the word "suka" (the word for the female dog, has the same figurative meaning). Well, he was a British native speaker so for him the 'r' sound kinda vanished. Basically, that was a big stretch to call them similar ;)

[Lucas694482]

How would you spell "daughters" so i can pronounce it as an English speaker?

[Jellei]

Hmmm... I guess "tsoorkee" would work as an approximation. And the 'r' has to be pronounced of course. If you know IPA, it's /ˈt͡sur.kʲi/.

[bluebird998042]

how about moje syny

[alik1989]

Nope. Moje is the wrong gender, and syny is just not how it's being inflected.

[TheShinigamiRyuk]

Is there a grammatical explanation for "sons" in Polish? Like why it gets the -owie? How do I tell when to give other nouns -owie when making them plural? I'm used to adding a -y/-i or just leaving it as is like drzwi (door/doors).

[alik1989]

Unfortunately there is no rule to the -owie ending. It can only occur with masculine personal nouns, but that's about all I can say on that topic. There are even nouns that allow two forms, e.g. Profesorzy/profesorowie, bohaterzy/bohaterowie...

Note that masculine personal endings are often different from other plural endings, as they feature a "palatalizing i" at the end.

• Policjant -> Policjanci (t changes to c)
• Pracownik -> Pracownicy. (k changes to c)

If you don't change the penultimate letter and just say policjanty and pracowniki, the meaning will become derogatory.

Drzwi is a rare exception as it is a pluralia tantum noun (no singular form exists).

[JudithStanley]

Although "my sons, my daughters" is a direct translation, I think we would usually say "my sons and daughters".

[PatrickKow5]

Ya why is moje wrong? syn is masculine is it not?

[Jellei]

It is. It's 'masculine personal', for which the right form is "moi".

"moje" is the form for 'not masculine-personal', that is the plurals of feminine nouns, of neuter nouns, and of masculine nouns that do not describe people.