"A lot of us are old."
Translation:Wielu z nas jest starych.
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In terms of the 'być' verb, such words as 'mało', 'dużo', 'wielu', 'wiele' and so on take the singular form, even though they denote plural. I understand why it may be confusing, but for a native it's hard to even imagine "Wielu z nas są starych" or "Wielu z nas jest stary", that's just wrong on so many levels.
837
So, if we use adverbs like “wielu” in this context, the verb “być” will remain singular but the following adjective has to be in Plural (even Genitive Plural)? I cannot imagine that not one native speaker ever wondered about the illogical composition of such rules. To pretend to be Singular in the front but behaving like a Plural in the back. :D
I don't understand why a direct object would matter, this works in any noun phrase that itself is either in Nominative ("wielu z nas" is a noun phrase in Nominative that has also Genitive inside) or Accusative (so the direct object). In other cases "z nas" wouldn't change, but if it was let's say "Wielu chłopców", then both words would undergo declension.
gramatical gender. and cases.
Wiele = feminine nouns, neuter nouns, masculine nouns that do not describe a person (nominative, accusative , wielu- genitive,dative, locative, wieloma- instrumental)
Wielu= male persons. (all cases)
I have no idea about mixed gender persons group, as my gut disagrees with my brain. (according to sjp.pwn wiele ludzi - many people is old-fashioned, and wielu ludzi is more proper)
Well, you have "a lot of people" = "many people" = "wielu ludzi", but it's something a bit different here. You can't substitute "a lot of us" with "many us", right? It's indeed "many of us". "[a lot of/many] out of us". That's also why you need the "z" in Polish, because it is in fact something a bit different grammatically.
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I completely understand "wielu starych." That matches up to my Russian brain. I guess "wielu jest starych" is just not intuitive for me. My brain wants to say either "wielu jest stare" or "wielu są stare(?)" or "wielu jest/są starymi ludźmi"
https://mowicpopolsku.com/polish-grammar/cases/ - this website is a great resource for learners.
Just watch out for the article about Genitive, some neuter examples are wrong.
Wiele z nas jest starych.
'Wiele' is the nonvirile version of 'wielu' and 'starych' remains as it is, because genitive plural doesn't distinguish gender.
Thank you. It is interesting that the subject and verb are in the singular Wielu/Wiele - jest but the predicate adjective is in the plural. Ah, I found more information about this – this appears to be a special case of a few quantifiers kilka, parę, wiele which behave like numbers above 5 in terms of the noun cases and verb forms taken" according to Wikipedia.
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Based on the discussion here, is it correct that jest is singular because it corresponds to wielu, while starych is genitive plural because it corresponds to nas?
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Nie przyjęło mi: "Wielu nas jest starych.", a sądzę, że powinno zaakceptować. Może dlatego, że korzystam z telefonu?