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- "Jeśli są fioletowe, nie kupu…
"Jeśli są fioletowe, nie kupuję ich."
Translation:If they are violet, I do not buy them.
55 Comments
I came here to figure out why that was not accepted also... Why was Robert down voted?
The Polish sentence is present tense, and the English sentence you wrote is future tense and changes the meaning from the Polish one. Yours is a different sentence.
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"Nie kupuję ich" is present tense, i.e. Whenever they are violet I do not buy them. This may indicate an occurrence that has previously happened and might happen again. "I will not buy them" might mean that if they are violet currently, I will not buy them (in the immediate or later future), I am not currently in the action of buying them (although it may be a subsequent action) and I may not have bought them previously. If this makes sense
This might be a weird question but... Is fioletowy - violet used commonly in Polish when referring to purply colours? I'm asking because in UK English it's rare (not incorrect at all, but rare) to ever describe anything other than violets as violet. Everything else is normally just referred to as purple. And is there a better Polish word for purple?
"purple" is "purpurowy". Both English and both Polish words are accepted in every sentence.
Well, what can I say - if you learn basic colours in English, then usually purple is among them, but if you learn them in Polish, they include fioletowy, which is rather violet. As Jerry wrote, they are slightly different. So the notion of the 'basic colours' isn't exactly the same in our cultures.
Thanks Jellei. That's exactly what I was wondering (and a more eloquent way of explaining it too). While we have indigo and violet as two of the colours of the rainbow here, they're not really basic colours in my view. They both fall under the blanket term purple. Violet is a light, pinky purple and indigo is a darker, bluey purple.
Appreciate the response to was was a slightly weird question. I have an interest in the cultural differences in colour perception. :)
The notion of 'basic colours' can be tricky. The distinction between blue and green can shift, even within the U.K., as the Welsh and Gaelic cultures have differing points of view. And some "Go" lights of Japanese traffic lights look distinctly blue to me.
In Japanese the "go" light is conventionally described as AOI, which usually means "blue"!
Fascinating article - many thanks for the link! The whole field of colour terms in different languages is a major topic in linguistics: if we ever get a Duolingo course in Gaelic this will certainly arise. (Among other interesting details, the Gaelic word GORM covers (or used to cover, before English influence began to spoil the distinctive usage of Gaelic colour words) light shades of blue, green and grey.
Well, if you mean "Irish Gaelic", there is such a course (listed as "Irish")
I remember that during my studies it was a major theme, too, as Derrick says. I vaguely remember a reference to Berlin & Kay in the early 1980s - the discussion also includes whether how we use language affects how we think or vice versa.
I personally think that violet and purple are slightly different colours; purple (to me) has slightly more blue in it than violet. Then there is the question of where "indigo" fits.
And don't forget "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain", being the colours of the rainbow, including both "indigo" and "violet".
Edit: Adding this link: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-violet-and-purple
While the meaning is almost the same, we don't want to mix Future Simple and Present Tense in the future meaning. After all, in English you immediately if it's grammatically Future or Present, if only you know the very basics of the language. In Polish, if you don't know the word, you may not see that "kupuję" is Present Tense and "kupię" is Future Simple. So we believe that for learning reasons it is better to keep to the direct translations.
Actually, I think that "I won't buy them" should be accepted too. It's not only, partially, a future tense, but also has the sense of "I don't want to buy them". More to the point, perhaps, it's what people would say in natural conversation.
Still, that's "Nie kupię". We have to differentiate somehow. I understand that it's more natural in English, but we will keep to the tenses.
"If they are violet THEN I'm not buying them" is a perfectly natural sentence in English but was marked incorrect. Whilst there is no Polish equivalent of "then" here I struggle to see how it's not an acceptable translation. Not a big deal but if I'm wrong, it would be helpful to know why.
I put the same: If they're violet, I'm not buying them. Not sure why it isn't accepted if the "then I'm not buying them" version is accepted... ?
As far as I can see, your sentence "If they're violet, I'm not buying them." is an accepted answer.
Oops, yes, sorry... my phone had autocorrected "violet" to "toilet" for some reason, which I only saw after I posted here and then it was hard for me to get back to this discussion thread to delete the comment. Sorry about that!
Is "them" mentioned in second part of the sentence? Would translation without "them" in the end also be correct?
I think both in Polish and English it could probably be acceptable in speech, but not necessarily correct per se. So, better stick to using "them".
"fioletowe" isn't wrong nor a typo, it's the correct word here. But this is a discussion of the 'translate into English' exercise, I believe...
That would be "Nie kupię" which is a different tense... (see above)
I thought 'jeśli' meant 'unless'. Is it ever used like that, or am I thinking of the wrong word?
I worte 'I do not buy them, " why it is wrong? must be' I am not buying them'?
I'd suggest that "I do not buy them" is correct, unless there is a different verb for Present Continuous.
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From what I understand, "ich" stands for "them" as in a group of people as well as a bunch of objects. Is that right?
- ich - them (men, or men and women)
- je - them (woman or objects)
However, in this sentence it's "ich", because it's in genitive and "ich" is the genitive form of "je".
The translation is awkward. Rather, if they are violet, I do not buy them.
Is the phrase in the second part of the sentence too short to say 'ich nie kupuje' to avoid the pronoun being at the end?
There are only two options, beginning or end. And if there is no other way, you should avoid putting it at the beginning, unless it's a nominative pronoun or there is a strong need to emphasize it.
Well, "they" represents plural, so the choice here would be one of "fioletowi" and "fioletowe". I guess it's assumed that "they" doesn't represent masculine animate, hence "fioletowe".
The full declension is here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fioletowy#Polish
A question to native polish speakers. Can the /j/ sound appear before the /i/ sound if it starts the next word after a word ending with vowel? In russian it can sometimes, like "покупаю их (pokupaju ich)" can be spelled as "pokupaju (j)ich".
I don't think that Russian adds extra sounds between words like these. Do you have any sources that can confirm that?
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In Polish, is there any aversion to ending a sentence with a preposition? If there were, one would say, "ich nie kupuję."
If you only have a choice between starting a clause with an object pronoun and ending it with a pronoun, then only the latter is an option.
