"Your birthday is not in October."

Translation:Twoje urodziny nie są w październiku.

January 4, 2016

15 Comments
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https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Xelareip

Why is the plural form correct here? Wouldn't it translate by "Your birthdays are in october"?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/luless

Urodziny is always plural.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Lt_Serebryakov

Why is it są? Isn't są supposed to be corresponding to oni/one? Twoje is like the possession form of ty, so if anything wouldn't it be masz? Or is it going by wasze? Which that would be wy meaning you (all). But (if thinking in English), wasze wouldn't make any sense. Because you'd be asking "(All of) your birthday is not in October." Wouldn't birthday have to be plural in that case?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/alik1989

Urodziny is always a plural noun, no matter how many birthdays you are talking about. If it were singular, the sentence would start with "twój", but well, that's not possible.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

"twoje"? No it's not.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/TobioJi

I noticed that it came up as 'wasze urodziny nie są w paźdierniku', but the English translation was 'Your birthday is not in October'. I get that birthday is always plural in Polish, but in Polish wasze is addressing multiple people, and in English it was 'Your birthday is...' which is addressing one person.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

True, I removed it from the starred answers, but I guess it's still possible if you're talking to twins, which is not even that rare.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/megmccaliano

Why can't you say, "Twoje urodziny to nie w październiku"?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

You can only use the 'to' construction if there are noun phrases on both its sides. "w październiku" is a prepositional phrase. Basically 'to' is a bit like an '=' sign. It makes sense to say "October = a month", but not "Your birthday = in October".


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/ankbhatnagar

Why is this wrong, “W październiku nie są twoje urodziny”?

So many other examples start with “W [month] październiku...”


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

Let's compare it to something more tangible: meat in the fridge. "your birthday" in this example will change to "meat", and "the fridge" represents "October".

A sentence analogous to the Polish sentence here would be "Mięso nie jest w lodówce". It means "The meat is not in the fridge". Therefore, it's somewhere else, for example on the table. Similarly, "your birthday is not in October. It's in November".

Let's reverse the order of the meat/fridge sentence. The opposite of "XYZ is in the place" in Polish, so "There is no XYZ in the place" changes the used verb. "jest" changes to "nie ma", literally "there has not", although of course that literal translation makes no sense in English. So it's not "nie są", but potentially "nie ma". And the next noun phrase would need to take Genitive: "nie ma twoich urodzin".

"W lodówce nie ma mięsa". Everything is clear in this sentence, "In the fridge there is no meat". But it doesn't mean the same as "The meat is not in the fridge". Perhaps you don't even have meat at home.

Similarly, "W październiku nie ma twoich urodzin" is like "In October there is no your birthday". Which, frankly, is a strange sentence (and probably even ungrammatical with 'no your'). Your birthday is supposed to be only on one day in the year, it's not like "October lacks your birthday", your birthday is simply not in October.

That's why you can't start this sentence with "W październiku", because that's not really what you mean.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MortenFyhn

But why is this twoje and not twoi? What makes urodziny nonvirile? From what I can tell (Wiktionary) urodziny doesn't have any gender.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/JerryMcCarthy99

"Nonvirile" in this context means "not male persons", and "birthdays" are not male persons.

"Urodziny" is plural.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/alik1989

Let me just add that every noun must have gender. If wiktionary doesn't mention it then it means that someone forgot to add it. I just updated this information.

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