"These lions are sad, because they are in a zoo."
Translation:Te lwy są smutne, bo są w zoo.
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oni - personal-masculine plural - only used with human males
one - non-personal-masculine plural - used with everything else.
Lions are not people => One
I went with "bo", but would like to know as well. I thought they were completely interchangeable, just more or less appropriate for certain uses?
If you write "bo" on the grammar test in school teacher would mark it as incorrect, because it is a colloquialism. But in everyday use they are completely interchangeable and no one notices the difference.
Ponieważ should be accepted - as it is the formal for because where bo is informal. An acceptable answer should be "Te lwy są smutne, ponieważ są w zoo." Please amend the acceptable answers.
I know it's a very old comment, but just so it doesn't stay unanswered - "ponieważ" works. I believe that it could have not worked yet when the comment was written, though ;)
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Slightly off topic question (maybe based off of wrongly using 'ci' instead of 'te' here): if people talk about anthropomorphised animals (for example animal characters in a children's cartoon) would they become grammatically personal? Like these real lions in a zoo are "te lwy" but if we're talking about Simba and Mufasa from the movie Król Lew, would it be "Ci lwy"? Not that I'm arguing for it as a right answer, just curious
It would still be "te lwy", because the fact that they're anthropomorphised doesn't change anything about the noun "lwy" itself.
However, the fact that those are two male anthropomorphised lions would result in using "oni" rather than "one" (and forms appropriate for "oni"), so yes, it would have some effect.
What matters is the grammatical gender of the noun you're actually using. E.g. I can call my cat simply "mój kot" and then it needs masculine forms, but if I use my cat's given name (Zuzia, so in English Suzie) and show that it's a female cat, then feminine forms will be used. Or if you're talking about little Tom and little Adam as "chłopcy" (boys), then they're 'masculine personal plural', but if you choose to use "dzieci" (children), then they're 'not masculine-personal plural'.
There are two plurals: "masculine personal" aka "virile" and "not masculine-personal" aka "non-virile".
"lew" (a lion) may be a masculine noun, but it doesn't describe a person, therefore "lwy" (lions) are non-virile.
"ci" is the form for virile plural (ci chłopcy, ci ludzie = these boys, these people), while "te" is the form for non-virile plural (te kobiety, te dzieci, te drzewa, te koty = these women, these children, these trees, these cats).