"Is this dinner good?"
Translation:Czy ta kolacja jest dobra?
27 Comments
Obiad refers to the middle meal of the day. The designers of this course decided to translate this as both dinner and lunch because different dialects of English use those words differently.
I would have stuck with lunch because anyone who refers to lunch as dinner as wrong, but no one asked my opinion.
Many cultures have the large meal of the day as the second one and call it dinner. The third meal is small and is called supper.
It's lunch in Russian and Ukrainian too but not dinner. uzin ("użyn") and weczerja are dinner, respectively. (Polish spelling)
it is not "wrong" - it is grammatically correct sentence, but it sounds unusual.
i believe, most questions this far in to the course, begin with 'czy', which would mean 'do (you)', or 'is (blank)'.
No, czy does not mean that. It literally means "or" but is just a question identifier at the beginning of a sentence.
School dinners are at lunchtime and sunday dinners are lunchtime both followed by tea as 3rd meal. After leaving school the midday meal becomes lunch except on Sundays and some café/restaurant menus which may serve all day breakfast as well. That is my experience of english in england.
That's so interesting, these differences! The term "school dinner" is non-existent in American English. It implies going to school at night
I dont see the genders displayed beside the translation :( they are different in german
But they are mostly based on the ending of the noun. Sure, there are exceptions, but your first assumption should be:
If it ends with a consonant, it's probably masculine.
If it ends with -a, it's probably feminine.
If it ends with -ę, -o or -um, it's neuter.
Can I skipe the word "jest". In russian and ukrainian it have sence without " jest". May be it not realy nesessary in polish language?
No, you can't skip the verb in Polish. That's a major difference between Russian/Ukrainian and Polish grammar. That's a feature left over from Old Slavic languages.
Polish has jestem/jesteś/jest/jesteśmy/jesteście/są
Old East Slavic had jesm'/jesy/jest'/jesmy/jestie/sut', but modern Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian dropped the verb in the present tense.
That's a good question @JLPCO is asking. Would it be correct to say
"Jest ta kolacja dobra?"
i think jest is only meant to be used in mid-sentence. e.g. jabłko 'jest' dobra. questions that have 'is,' or 'do,' at the beginning start with 'czy'. putting jest at the start and translating it word for word like that seems sort of incorrect grammar-wise.
this may not be true, i'm judging off what i remember and what i've learnt.
To jest is a set phrase meaning "this is"/"it is," or as a question, "is this...?"/"is it...?" So,
Czy to jest wino stare? means "Is this/is it old wine?" In Polish, an adjective often comes after the noun.
But, Czy ta kolacja jest dobra? The noun determiner "ta" modifies the noun kolacja, so "Is this dinner good?" or "This dinner is good?" as a question.
As for your second question, the debate is rather old, because Duolingo used to have two starred answers to "dinner". That basically depends on the way of talking about the meals in English you are used two, with the two most common being "breakfast/lunch/dinner" and "breakfast/dinner/supper". After a long time we decided to use the first one as the main way and the latter as something accepted. Polish people, I believe, mostly know the second way (seems to be more British).
