"To przez ciebie!"
Translation:It is because of you!
46 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Przez is across, over or through in English. It is not 'because' in any Polish dictionary I have ever seen. It may, of course, have some kind of Polish idiomatic meaning in this sentence, but neither this course nor any other course I know about has ever taught this meaning.
https://pl.pons.com/t%C5%82umaczenie/polski-angielski/przez
That's the very first dictionary I checked and, well, it's in there.
It's in there, as the sixth meaning... that doesn't really grant us a chance to get it right first, without any context. This is typically the kind of text you must get wrong once in order to move on.
Hints are never reliable and you know this as much as I do... It can only work if you really just cherrypick sentences for the sixth meaning and not for the first five, otherwise it's near useless again.
No? 'It is through you that I have come to appreciate this' There is no religion in that.
OK, wrong association. But your sentence is clearly positive. "To przez ciebie" is definitely negative.
Just to illustrate the meaning and the negativity. A minute from "Harry Potter" in Polish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2KIbN2UA58 "Straciłem przez ciebie sługę!" ("You lost me my servant!")
Pan Luciusz Malfoy is impressive enough to help to remember the word easier, I think :)
In english, "It is because of you" does not have to be negative. Good things can happen because of someone else. "Thanks to you" is an alternative way of expressing that idea. What makes this phrase so definitely negative in Polish?
Ok, "przez" = negative. Tks.
We can look at "because of" both ways in English. In fact, "thanks to you" can also be used ironically as a negative.
That turned out badly, thanks to you !
We can also use "no thanks to you".
That turned out well, no thanks to you.
Jellei - You state that 'To przez ciebie' is a negative expression. Can you tell me, please, how to express something like Stewart288923's thoughts, as in 'It's through you that I can buy the ticket' (because she gave me the extra money)? Dzięki!
Dzięki tobie zacząłem to doceniać - Thanks to you I've come to appreciate this
To przez ciebie (mam długi)! - It's because of you/It's your fault (I am in debt)!
I would say 'It is through you' rather than 'because ' of you and here the Polish is exactly the same word as in English. (But doubtless this is not a US expression...)
In what context would you use it? Only religious ones come to my mind. And I really don't know if something like that would be said the same way in Polish... generally this is equivalent to "This is your fault!".
You could say "it is through you that i got work", synonymous to because in this instance.
I'm reminded of the old letter sent in to school by the parent of an absentee student: "Please excuse Timmy from school this week, he has been ill with diarrhoea through a hole in his wellingtons."
'Through' can definitely be used as a synonym for 'because' in English.
Not sure how to distinguish between this meaning 'because of' and 'for'. They are two very different things.
530
I'm not a native Polish speaker, but I would guess that it could only mean 'for' in the sense of 'because', i.e. "Don't worry, for I shall slay this dragon!" Which is, of course, pretty old-fashioned in English. Hopefully a Polish native speaker can correct me if I am wrong.
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Would 'przez' be used to translate a sentence like "This damage has been caused by a storm"? (I don't know anything about Polish passive constructions yet.)
Yes, it would work.
"Te uszkodzenia/szkody zostały spowodowane przez burzę" ('damage' is usually plural in Polish unless it's literally one damaged thing, and not very seriously).
'It's through you that I can buy a ticket' suggests rather that 'you' is the agent who can facilitate the buying of a ticket.
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I'm happy i understood this exchange (i think) Jellei, where are you, i need you! Yes, I'm listening? Haha
Exactly :) "Słucham?" or "Tak, słucham?" are also common thing to say right after you answer the phone. Especially when you don't know who's calling ;)
Cię is a so-called unaccented and ciebie an accented form. After prepositions (e.g.: przez) the longer accented form is mandatory. There is only one exception I'm aware of, but this is basically just a fixed expression:
To rozumie się samo przez się. - This goes without saying. (where się is the unaccented form of the reflexive pronoun siebie)
Here I've listed the most important rules regarding the usage of accented pronouns:
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/43327702?comment_id=43362115
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Gee, thanks!
So, cię is like "you" and ciebie is like "YOU"? As in the difference between "you did it" and "YOU did it"?
Exactly. However, in a sentence like this (where we have a preposition), only ciebie is an option, so this YOU/you analogy might not always apply.
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Right, right, I see. Wow, thanks for all your help! Polish is so challenging, but so rewarding!
As far as the rulebook of this course is concerned, you must use cię whenever you don't have to use ciebie. There is never a situation when you can use either of them with no change in meaning.
However, as I mentioned in my linked comment, natives often don't apply this rule and sprinkle their emphatic pronouns all over the place, which is unfortunate for learners, because it makes the non-emphatic cię look redundant. Someone may then ask: Why do I need to learn these rules if I can safely use ciebie everywhere? Someone who's new to Polish would be very likely to choose the path of least resistance and use the 'safer' option (ciebie) excessively. More exessively, I predict, than any native speaker would do.
That's why we chose to make this rule stricter than it is in real life. I hope that makes sense.
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Why is "thanks to you" not correct? It can also have a negative association e.g. "it's thanks to you that I lost my bus"
That's when you use it ironically. We can't accept ironic interpretations, because otherwise we'd have translations which are exact opposites of each other, eg.: Good job! = You messed it up!
Wow, everyone losing their minds that two languages may not have exactly equivalent phrases... isn't this one of the cool aspects of learning a new language?
