"Jesień to nie jest dobry okres."
Translation:Autumn is not a good period.
21 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Why is there both "to" and "jest" in the sentence? What does the "to" signify?
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Well, although „to” can be translated as "is" in certain sentences, it isn't actually a verb. „To” means simply "it". So a sentence like „ryba to zwierzę” literally translates as "fish – it (is) animal”. It might sound primitive that way, but it's perfectly valid Polish sentence.
So when you see such sentences with „to” but without „jest”, the latter word is still assumed to be there. You can also include „jest” and that's too perfectly fine.
This also explains why you would negate sentences with „to” as „to nie” rather than „nie to”.
Ohhh, wow. So the lack of jest in other sentences is just some kind of idiomatic shortcut and they're in fact the exceptions to the rule? Why then do you not need to use the accusative for sentences of form "noun1 to noun2" but it is being used here? (Sorry, I'm not trying to argue that I'm right or anything - clearly I'm not. I'm just still a bit confused as to how this thing works.)
- 82
Both sentences with „to” and with „to jest” use nominative for both nouns. Indeed, this sentence uses nominative for both nouns. Only when there isn't „to”, but there is „jest”, would you use instrumental for noun 2. Then the sentence would be „Jesień nie jest dobrym okresem”.
Thank you so much! Last question, I swear: does "nie" change the case of the second noun in "to" sentences?
Thank you very much for that explanation. Then I understand that "Jesień to nie jest dobry okres." it is, more or less, like saying: "Autumn IT is not a good period", right?, since we could also say "Jesień nie jest dobrym okresem" (or even "Jesień to nie dobry okres.")
I don't know if comparing it to "Autumn IT is not..." is a good idea, because the English sentence does not look natural to me (if it's even correct...), while the Polish one is perfectly natural.
About "Jesień to nie dobry okres", I wouldn't recommend it. Why? "Jesień to dobry okres" is definitely fine... But when you add "nie", it kinda looks like a mistake in negating the adjective "dobry". "nie" is written together with adjectives, so the negation of "dobry" is "niedobry". I don't know if your sentence is wrong (if we assume it has an invisible "jest", it makes sense), but I would really recommend putting this "jest" explicitly and going with "Jesień to nie jest dobry okres".
Thank you so much Jellei! I just saw your response (had the notifications disabled when I was writting).
Seems like a more common sentence, but it's not what 'okres' means. 'okres' is a very vague word, 'season' is too specific.
Why is it not acceptable to translate as "autumn ia not a good time period"?
"Autumn is not a good period of time" was not accepted. Why? If you hover on "okres" it says it can be translated as "period of time", so what's the problem?
Seems reasonable; Duo already accepts "The fall", so why not "The autumn"?
I have just added it.
