- Forum >
- Topic: Polish >
- "Nie słyszę dziewczynki."
25 Comments
1122
Why is this not girls? What Case is this in, and how would you pluralize "girls"?
Please and thank-you.
EDIT: it's Genitive, isn't it? And this is the Genetive Singular of "girl".
With "nie słyszę" you use the genitive.
"Słyszę dziewczynkę. Nie słyszę dziewczynki" = "I hear the girl. I do not hear the girl"
"Słyszę dziewczynki. Nie słyszę dziewczynek" = "I hear the girls. I do not hear the girls"
(for the declension see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dziewczynka#Polish)
I have concluded that deciphering Fermat's last theorem is easier than learning Polish
Hey, atleast we aren't learning English. I applaude anyone who learns the English language. It has so many rules that are broken and it is honestly so annoying even as my first language!!
- 119
I'm British, and from learning languages at school and being told English is harder I am now finding that hard to believe. "This" is always this in all forms. Cat is always Cat, unless there are 2 or it's a kitten, of course. A boy is always a boy doesn't matter what form. So, to the majority that read this, do you think English is harder than other languages to learn? Just curious :)
The main difficulty, I believe, is the inconsistent pronunciation.
See https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti#:~:text=Ghoti%20is%20an%20artificial%20word,in%20women%20%2F%CB%88w%C9%AAm%C9%AAn%2F%3B%20and for a pair of somewhat overstated examples.
And the inconsistent usage of tenses, and the sequence of tenses, and the illogical tenses in conditionals... ;)
Fun Fact, incidentally, the Klingon word for "fish" is "ghotI" (that's capital "I" (eye) at the end....).
- 1433
"I don't hear the girl" as well as "I don't hear a girl" should be accepted, shouldn't it?
dziewczynka literally indicates a little girl and is the dimunitive of dziewczyna. Eddie
However in a statement like that, how do you know if it's in the proper context. There may be one or there may be a dozen that were playing and how would you distinguish between the two?
As I wrote. You have the verb "słyszeć" and it takes Accusative. It's negated here, and negated Accusative = Genitive.
The Genitive singular form is "dziewczynki". The Genitive plural form is "dziewczynek". Therefore this sentence is undoubtedly in singular.
Most feminine nouns have the following forms identical: Nominative plural, Accusative plural, Genitive singular.
I seem to have a lot of difficulty with the types of verbs. Can you suggest a site or workbook that can help?
You may check this post for posts on topics that are difficult to you: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16296174
Yes. But you didn't take cases into consideration.
First, the verb "słyszeć" (to hear) takes Accusative.
Secondly, here you negate it. And negated Accusative turns into Genitive. (IMPORTANT: only negated Accusative changes case. The other cases stay the same when negated).
And "dziewczynki" is not only Nominative plural, it's also Genitive singular. Actually, most (but not all) feminine nouns have Genitive singular identical to Nominative plural.
It has happened again. My answer is "nie słyszę dziewczynki" literally. What's the difference?
The comment section is for the PL->ENG translation exercise...
"Nie słyszę dziewczynki" is the main answer. "Nie słyszę dziewczyny" also works, that will be about an older girl or a young woman.
It is. In Nominative and Accusative. But here you need Genitive, so "dziewczynki" may only be singular and the plural would be "dziewczynek".
Who do I speak to? I want to protest to whomever made up the Polish language. That's just ridiculous!
I thought i endings were plural? Mężczyzna - mężczyżni. But now dziewczynka is dziewczynki and that's supposed to make sense?
So basically in Polish we dance all over word endings because every single verb has its own rules with its own case and each case zaps logical word endings into something completely new in this case because just because?
The fact that you don't see the logic (I hope "yet") doesn't mean that there isn't one. And I understand it's complicated, but it is how it is, and of course to native speakers everything comes automatically.
"słyszeć" takes Accusative case, right? Then when a verb that took Accusative gets negated, it takes Genitive instead. Other cases stay unchanged when negated.
So "a girl" should take the Genitive case here. And luckily or not, you may remember the following pattern: almost all feminine nouns have the Genitive singular form identical to Nominative/Accusative plural form.
It's a common question: "but I thought that dziewczynki was plural" - yes, it's Nominative plural. Just not only.
I've been also wondering: would people prefer if absolutely every form (7 singular and 7 plural) was different, or does the fact that some of them repeat makes something easier? Serious question, I have no opinion here.
Those of us who learned Latin as their first new language got used to repeated endings pretty quickly :-) .
