"Podoba mi się twoja sukienka."
Translation:I like your dress.
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what is the difference between Podoba mi się twoja sukienka and lubię twoja sukienka?
Lubię twoja sukienka is not correct. It would be lubię twoją sukienkę. And it is not really that much of a meaning difference. You can say both.
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So, they are safely interchangeable? Good to know, I too wondered when this new verb appeared.
They are definitely not safely interchangeable. Podobać się komuś is more or less equivalent to German jemandem gefallen.
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Ah, so that's the difference. Thanks a lot, but it's obvious why it could not be translated distinctively into English.
Yes, this seems like quite a good explanation. Theoretically, with this example you could say "Lubię twoją sukienkę" - I like you in it, I like when you wear it.
But "Podoba mi się twoja sukienka" is more probable as it basically means "I think your dress is pretty."
The Polish sentence is a very basic one. Just as "I like your dress" is in English. "Your dress pleases me" is a step towards understanding the grammatical structure of Polish, but that doesn't really feel like a translation.
So let's admit that "lubić" and "podobać się" are synonyms (at this level). Anyway thanks again for your attention ...
Here twoja sukienka is in nominative for the verb podoba? Is that why the verb doesn't have suffix _am or _ę, which is always there for the verbs in first person? Can we say Twoja sukienka podoba się mi (except that here the sentence ends with a pronoun, which is wrong)?
"twoja sukienka" is in Nominative because technically... it's the subject of the sentence here. It's kinda like an English sentence "Your dress is pleasing to me". You'll see something similar in Spanish: Me gusta tu vestido. Although of course Spanish doesn't have cases.
So the verb "podoba się" is the 3rd person singular, because it has to match "twoja sukienka", which we can treat as "it".
About your sentence, you could maybe get away with "Twoja sukienka podoba się mnie" (at least the pronoun at the end is the accented version), but I'd stick to either "Podoba mi się twoja sukienka" or "Twoja sukienka mi się podoba".
Here is something I don't understand. I thought sie is a generic reflexive pronoun, but why do we need both "mi" and "sie"? I guess the answer is that certain verbs just come with sie whatever else they come with?
I'm using the app, so I can't tell how 'old' your question is... Also I'm not a native. But here's how I understand it: Some verbs that use się do not take an object - for example urodzić się. Other verbs that use się DO take an object - for example podobać się like in this sentence, the object being a personal pronoun in the dative case, mi. (Someone correct me if that was wrong please)
You are absolutely correct, "podobać się" needs an object. Ex. I like this = To mi się podoba. Asking "Czy twoja sukienka się podoba?" would have quite a different meaning: "Is your dress liked (by everyone)? So, it is possible but not very common to NOT have the object here.
Am I understand this well? 'Twoja sukienka' is the subject here (nominative), so technically it could be 'Twoja sukienka podoba mi się', but the order is different because we want to stress 'mi'?
It could be:
Twoja sukienka mi się podoba
"Się" is an unstressed reflexive pronoun and rarely goes at the end.
"Mi" is also unstressed, the stressed version is "mnie". But frankly, not every speaker abides by that rule.
'Your dress appeals to me?' I admit that it doesn't sound like very natural, 'every day' kind of English but it is a more literal translation?
I'm not sure if it's a translation... it's something that is helpful when explaining how "Podoba mi się" works grammatically, but I believe it says something a bit different semantically.
Yeah ... 'podoba mi się' can be quite a difficult phrase to translate to/interpret in English, whilst conveying the appropriate meaning, according to the context of the rest of the sentence. For some of the Polish sentences on Duo 'appeals to me' is accepted as a translation. But I do agree that in this context 'Your dress appeals to me', would be an odd/unnatural thing to say someone, even if it does make sense in English.
'Your dress pleases me' is a helpful translation in that it has helped me to understand why the dress is the subject of the sentence and isn't in the accusative (which was puzzling me)
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To get the reflexivity into the sentence, you might use, 'Your dress makes itself appealing to me'.
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I don't know how to predict the correct word order. 'Mi podoba się' and 'Podoba się mi' seem to me just as plausible as 'Podoba mi się'.
If Jan liked the dress, would it be 'Podoba Janowi się twoja sukienka'?
Mi podoba się... doesn't work, because you can't start a sentence with an unaccented object pronoun (however, some natives do it anyway).
Technically, Podoba się mi... is correct, but a search in the National Corpus suggests that this word order is almost 60 times less common than Podoba mi się.... Hence, I won't accept it for now, but I'll ask the team to confirm this decision.
Now, with nouns, it's a bit different. I've searched the corpus for sentences that start with:
1) [Noun] + się + [podobać] -> 27 results.
2) [Podobać] + się + [noun] -> 51 results.
3) [Noun] + [podobać] + się -> 80 results.
4) [Podobać] + [noun] + się -> 0 results.
So, I'd say that only Podoba się Janowi..., Janowi się podoba... and Janowi podoba się... are acceptable options.
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Thanks for your reply.
So 'Mnie podoba się' might be all right?
As for the last four searches, were those nouns all in the dative case (rather than nominative)?
It sounds okay but sounds as if it was a contrast: "You do not like it but I do".
Yes, I specifically searched for dative nouns. Nominative is also possible, but that would reverse the meaning. In that case Jan would be the one who is being liked/fancied by someone.