"Te dzieci jedzą chleb."
Translation:The children eat bread.
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Ten/ta/to/ci/te can be translated both as this/these and that/those in most situations. When there is a contrast (you want to distinguish between this thing and that thing) or large distance (that thing is far away), you can use tamten/tamta/tamto/tamci/tamte, which means that/those only.
This is not "ci", so no men are among these children. Which means that they are girls, not boys. Would "These girls eat bread" be a correct translation? Or perhaps dzieci also allows beings of some other non-male non-female gender?
I understand your logic, but with this particular example it is in fact not masculine-personal. The singular word "dziecko" (child) doesn't show gender, it's neuter. So we do not know anything about the children's gender. While they may even be all boys, "dzieci" will be grammatically not masculine-personal anyway.
I heard of the terms singuar and plural verb in a polish grammar book. Now i can see what they meant is jedza would be a plural because it used with the plural children.
I see you are learning German and Spanish. Just like in those languages verbs change depending of person and number.
Ja jem =I eat= Ich esse
ona je= she eats= sie isst
my jemy= we eat= wir essen
etc
The singular forms in nominative and accusative are explained by Duolingo (demonstrative pronouns), but not the singular instrumental and the plural forms. So te and ci are not being clarified yet. Can anyone help me with these? Better yet, can anyone help me complete these forms?
wiktionary polish
wiktionary english
Do you know Polish plural genders?
Ci is masculine personal
Te is "other", not masculine personal - all feminine nouns, all neuter nouns, masculine not personal nouns.
Thank you immery. I thought tego and tamtego must be used in accusative male animate. You say ci is masculine personal. Does that mean that animals get tego/tamtego in the singular form but te in the plural form?
Yes. I really think it is easier to think like there are 5genders 3singular and 2 plural. Well it might be because this is how i was tought to see it.
"te" is fem but there are only neuter and masc words in this sentence, could someone help me understand why its used here?
"te" is for 'not masculine-personal plural'.
This means that it will be used for plurals of feminine nouns, for plurals of neuter nouns, and those masculine ones which don't describe people. So, most nouns. "dziecko" is neuter, so "dzieci" is also 'not masculine-personal'.
The hover hints for 'te' put 'the' at the top, so I assumed it was the correct translation and look what it's got me. I will never trust anything in this course ever again.
The polish has "Te", but the English says "The" . It's definitely "These children", correct?
It seems this is a shared sentence with the English for Polish speakers course, where they use "ten", "te", etc. to explain the meaning of "the". "The children" and "These children" mean more or less the same thing, we always accept "the" in such sentences. But it shouldn't be the main translation.
I will remove this sentence and create one that is not shared with the other course.