"Więzienie jest w stolicy."

Translation: The prison is in the capital.

[Walkinthedog]

We have jails, the slammer, the hoosegow, the crowbar hotel and finally tank. Let's see some non native figure that one out. This is what makes it difficult if you aren't a native familiar with the lingo or language as civilized refer it as. Enjoy.

[deactivated user]

An alternative spelling for "jail" is "gaol".

[Jellei]

OK, added.

[Colin198350]

I checked, the speaker does not pronouce the final /e/ in więzienie - also I guess the singular verb should have given me a clue.

[Gerardd88]

The pronunciation here is correct. The "e" is pronounced.

[PierreMDL]

Unless you meant any living speaker?

[BenPaloAlto]

In English, there are two words: capital and capitol (a capitol is the building where a state's legislature meets). How do you say capitol in Polish? Kapitol?

[Jellei]

"Kapitol" indeed, but I think it has literally two meanings:

1. the hill in Rome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Hill)

2. the building of the US Capitol in Washington

For any other place that is called like that in English, I think the translation would need to be more descriptive. Maybe something using "siedziba" ("headquarters")...

[BenPaloAlto]

Those are both capital C capitols. A small c capitol is any other seat of government (i.e. not in Washington DC). Would this sound weird: odwiedzam kapitol stanu w Madisonie.

[Jellei]

I checked "Madison" on Polish Wikipedia (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison), and although it's not exactly the highest instance in terms of language:

1. Well, it does mention "Kapitol stanu Wisconsin" and "Kapitol stanowy", thus suggesting that it works.

2. It's treated as a neuter name ("Madison zostało założone...") and thus I'd say that it's "kapitol stanu w Madison", with no declension. If it was masculine, then it would be "w Madisonie".

So I guess this would sound okay, but people would need a bit deeper knowledge of the US government system to understand what you mean.

[BenPaloAlto]

Thanks for checking for me. It sounds like siedziba would be a safer bet. And thanks for checking out Madison. I've only been there once, decades ago, but it is a cool town and has good looking capitol building.

[Jas789]

Why "w" and not "na"?

[Jellei]

Both those words have their own collocations, "w" is (I think) a lot more common, 'the default', so to speak. I can't imagine anyone saying "na stolicy".

[A__drian]

I'm sure there must be a post on when locative and genitive declensions of nouns are identical; can you point me to it. Thanks.

[Jellei]

I don't think there's such a post. Native speakers rather don't remember that 'this form and this one are identical', we just know the right forms.

Going through a few examples quickly in my head, it's not like for any specific gender those two are always identical - it's probably phonetics, a matter of endings.

[BenPaloAlto]

In guessing the locative form for stolica, I thought of words that end in a, e.g. kobieta, so I guessed stolicie. Which is wrong of course. Any hints as to why not? Does it have to do with the ca ending? Are there any other words ending in ca that go to cy in locative?

[alik1989]

Feminine nouns are divided into three groups, depending on their stem ending. The stem ending of stolica is -c, which puts it in the third group:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish/Locative_case#Nouns

[BenPaloAlto]

Thanks so much. This is a great reference! I had it all wrong. It depends on the stem, not on the final vowel. Dziękuję bardzo!

[AndreiHorac]

There's a jail in the capital is rejected

[alik1989]

It's a different sentence.

There's a jail in the capital. - W stolicy jest więzienie.
The jail is in the capital. - Więzienie jest w stolicy.