"To zwierzę jest stare."

Translation: This animal is old.

[MuratNasyrov]

Very sad sentences in this exercise. :-(

[brjaga]

Why isn't "stare" in the instrumental here? Is that only for nouns after być?

[mihxal]

Yes, instrumental is used with nouns and adjectives accompanying them.

[velo.anaconda]

I cant hear the difference between stare and stary :')

[Jellei]

Not sure if that's helpful, but you're not the only one. Apparently those are very similar sounds for the learners, at least in the beginning.

Personally I never considered them similar before I started dealing with Duolingo... but well, such things are obvious to the native ear.

[franco.magurno]

zwierzę...i can hear a slight difference with "e" of stare...but "ę" should not have a "n" sound in the end?

[Jellei]

Not really. It's just nasalized "e". For some people it is helpful to approximate it to 'en', but that's really too much.

And in fact if ę is the final sound of the word, it sounds almost the same (or exactly the same) as the normal e.

[franco.magurno]

so the "n" sound is just for ę in the middle of a word?

[Jellei]

I still wouldn't say it's an 'n' sound, but yeah, in the middle.

[Telepurte]

Mah heart, mah soul.. :(