- Forum >
- Topic: Polish >
- "This woman's husband does no…
"This woman's husband does not speak English."
Translation:Mąż tej kobiety nie mówi po angielsku.
16 Comments
mąż - subject
ta kobieta - 'owner' of said husband - to express possession you use Genitive
so Gen: ta kobieta -> tej kobiety. The word order is fixed, 'tej kobiety mąż, mąż kobiety tej' etc are not natural, unless in some very narrow context.
So we have (subject) + (atribute, description) => Mąż tej kobiety.
actually, I speak Polish and there's literally nothing wrong with saying "tej kobiety maz" dulingo is just picky af
Well... okay, added, but the word order seems a bit unusual. Like, you're talking about the husband, but you're focusing on the woman for some reason... that's my feel.
I mean, my Polish grammar teachers have always mentioned that putting the word at the beginning or end of the sentence gives it emphasis, so I guess it just depends on what you want to emphasize. So yea to some poeple i guess emphasizing the woman sounds odd. Duolingo has a very specific way of speaking Polish (which is why it says I'm 1% fluent in it, though I've been speaking it since I could actually produce words instead of just sounds) so if you don't learn the language the way they want you to, you're learning it wrong, ya know? For example, they say koszula means shirt. I've literally only ever heard my dad call his dress shirts koszule everything else is just a bluzka. Maybe it's also because my Polish is sort of americanized at this point, but it's still unnecessarily picky about things like "maz tej kobiety"
Where do you have fluency in Polish counted?
As to possesion- "normal" word order is noun+noun in genitive - mąż kobiety, książka Kasi- but Polish has almost free word order- so changing this is grammatically correct, but calls much mote attention to the phrase.
Bluzka- this is clearly Polish-American thing. No man in Poland will be caught wearing "bluzka" (Well not really there are cross-dressers etc.)
as to being unnecessarily picky- there are three possible circumstances - 1)options the course creators didn't think about 2) options that are clearly incorrect in Polish even though some Polish people speak this way 3) options that are technically correct but very rare in Polish, but that are literal translation of English.
on my screen it has fluency in the top right corner. And yea, my Polish is just a bit americanized at this point. but yea, I get that. If I want to advance in Polish on here, I have to do it by learning Polish the way Duolingo teaches it. Also, I didn't even know bluzka translated to blouse until this course xD
Hmmm you are right! I hadn't noticed because i talk to myself as i go along.
I've come to understand that you put the subject at the beginning to emphasize it. Not sure if it's correct, since Duolingo is the only resource I have and you kinda just have to learn from trial and error here :/
If this is true , then how is one supposed to be able to tell what to emphasize? In my answer, I put tej at the beginning and it was counted wrong. Is there something I'm missing??
- Thoroughly Confused/Trying Very Hard
You put the subject at the begining - at first its hard to understand if you dont have another language that also does this but i think over time your brain gets used to the pattern. So anyways, Mąż is first because that's what you're talking about. In polish you dont say "this womans husband" you say "husband this woman's" its easier in the begining to think of a comma being there in english so to translate it like"husband, this woman's, ..." Yk or at least that's what i did and it helped but my polish is still basic af :)
It's just the most common word order for genitive constructions: [possessee] + [possessor (genitive)].
"Tej kobiety mąż" is something you would hear often in song lyrics or poems, but it's not considered stylistically acceptable in common speech.
When you miraculously get it right even though you were just guessing and entirely expected it to be wrong... And all you got was flak for missing the accent on mówi. :O
Must be having a good brain day!
