"The girls and the boys are reading."

Translation: Dziewczynki i chłopcy czytają.

[Moopie614]

Why is "Te dziewczynki i ci chłopcy czytają." also a correct solution? I thought that that would mean "These girls and these boys are reading"?

[mihxal]

Polish doesn't have articles but you can use determiners if it's necessary. There's not much difference between them and articles in meanig.

[cpesa]

"Te dziewczynki i ci chłopcy czytają" has two demostrative pronouns. It's not correct to translate it as "the girls and the boys are reading", according to criteria that lessons before this have used (there any confusion between "this" and articles was considered wrong).

[Jellei]

Frankly... although ""Te dziewczynki i ci chłopcy czytają" should rather be "These girls and these boys are reading", the number of people putting such answers is Too Damn High (c), so they are accepted - after all, in proper context 'the' can be understood as a demonstrative pronoun. The Russian course does exactly the same, for example. But of course I recommend keeping closer to the grammar and translating such sentence simply as perfectly correct "Dziewczynki i chłopcy czytają".

But I was surprised to find that it is one of the two 'best answers'. It shouldn't be, so not it will only be an accepted answer.

[MountainAsh2]

What's the difference between i, a and z? Google Translate says that they all mean "and". Thank you in advance!

[Jellei]

'z' doesn't mean 'and. It's main (?) meaning is "with", it can also mean "from" and probably a few other things.

"i" is the normal "and" used for listing things.

"a" is the "and" that shows contrast: "Chłopiec je, a dziewczynka pije" (The boy is eating and the girl is drinking).

[MountainAsh2]

Thank you! Your quick and lucid responses are always appreciated, especially considering that this language has so few learning resources.