"Lipiec jest miesiącem roku."

Translation: July is a month of the year.

[ourwaltz]

Does this mean:

"July is a month of the year" or "July is the month of the year". How would I specify the latter sentence (this month is july)?

[podeksiemieniem]

Lipiec jest miesiącem roku could mean both , but Lipiec jest miesiącem w roku means July is a month of the year , and with your sentence , ( 1 ) Ten miesiąc jest lipcem or ( 2 ) Ten miesiąc to lipiec ( better ) or eventually ( 3 ) Ten miesiąc nazywa się lipiec ( That month is named "Lipiec" )

[luless]

You can say 'Lipiec jest tym miesiącem' - 'July is the/this month'.

In Polish you dont really have to worry about a/the. Distinction between those two usually comes with context. Without context both are correct (in majority of cases).

[littlelaurel]

Is there something in the Polish sentence that implies the translation to be 'of' instead of 'in?'

July is a month in the year. vs. July is a month of the year.

[karlr42]

I would say, it's because 'roku' is genitive case, and genitive case is used for possession, hence, 'of'. 'July is a month [that belongs to] the year' = 'July is a month of the year'.

[centaurii]

This finally made it make sense to me, otherwise I had the same question as littlelaurel

[CostelloMusic98]

styczen, luty, marzec, kwiecien, maj, cerwiec, lipiec, sierpien, wrzesien, pazdziernik, listopad, grudzien
or something like that, I'm still learning :

[Euhan1]

Much better than months not of the year...

[YuvalRudni]

July is a year's month is also a legitimate translation.

[Jellei]

Yeah, I guess. Should work now.

[WonderfulWalrus]

How does the Genitive case work here? I can follow the template of "<Nom> jest <Inst>", but I don't have a matching one that includes a Genitive. Is the year belonging to the month, or the month belonging to the year? (I'm taking YuvalRudni's comment below to mean the latter.)

Does this template work in general, so "pies jest zwierzęciem człowieka" would translate to "A dog is a man's animal"? Is there a piece of the course that I can skip ahead to (or wait for) that offers a deeper explanation of how the grammar works here instead?

[immery]

In general noun+noun(genitive) indicated possesion/belonging, with the noun in genitive = owner.

Unfortunately we don't have many explanations in the course, and possession is rather easy thing. There is a very long guide about genitive, and has one sentence about possesion

2.To describe ownership

When used with a noun:

"koszula(nom.) ojca (gen.)" - [the shirt of the father]
But when the ownership is expressed with a pronoun, the case of pronoun has to be >the same as case of possessed noun:

"moja(nom.) koszula(nom.)" - [my shirt]
"nie ma mojej(gen.) koszuli(gen.)" - [there is not my shirt] - Genitive because of >negation ("nie ma" is a verb-like construction), not because of ownership.

3.Partial Genitive

It is used to describe a part of something:

"kawałek(nom.) chleba (gen.)" - [a piece of bread]
"odcinek(nom.) serialu (gen.)" - [an episode of tv-series]

[WonderfulWalrus]

Oh wow, I did not know there were these guides. That answered my question rather well. I found Jellei's collection of them (https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16296174) so I'll be working through those too. Thanks!

[JACOBhH]

Ofcourse it is