"Ta kaczka je chleb."
Translation:This duck is eating bread.
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I am unsure about when to use "Ta", "To" and "Ten" especially when the gender of words can change e.g. Pomidor - Pomidora Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The gender of a noun (almost*) doesn't change. "pomidora" is a form of the noun "pomidor", but when figuring out what the gender is, you need to look at the basic, Nominative form - which is "pomidor". It ends with a consonant, so it's almost certainly masculine.
*Almost, because for example words like "premier" (prime minister) or "prezydent" (president) or some names of professions may change gender depending on whether they describe a man or a woman.
Anyway, I think the best way to figure this out is to read this: https://www.clozemaster.com/blog/polish-demonstrative-pronouns/
I hate it when words that are different genders in different languages. In French the duck in general is a male unless specified. Is there a word for male duck in Polish?
Yes, "kaczor". "Donald Duck" = "Kaczor Donald".
But we generally don't accept other words for animals than the 'default species name'. It may rather create confusion when suggested to the learner, than be helpful. And frankly I don't think you'd hear "kaczor" often outside of conversations about the citizens of Duckburg (Polish: "Kaczogród", if anyone's interested).
Because it doesn't match the noun.
Polish determiners (this, that) have forms dependent on the gender (and also the case). So in Nominative you will for example have "ten chleb" (this bread, masculine) but "ta kaczka" (this duck, feminine).
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Off topic, but I'd like to congratulate you and the team on the frequent use of Present Continuous. This is almost non-existent in the English from Polish course (and in all the Duo English courses that I've seen), resulting in a lot of somewhat unnatural constructions.
Easy to understand the rule, except the fact of duck being considered feminine. In my language (Portuguese - Brazil), we use masculine pronoun to reference to a duck.
There's no better answer than 'it just is'. Every species of animal has its name and it can be either masculine, feminine or (rarely) neuter.
Got it marek, can you please tell me howmany nouns are there, if you explain me like that it would be great help, dzienki!
How many nouns? Do you mean how many genders?
Well, in singular you have masculine, feminine and neuter. There is one case (Accusative), where it is also important whether a masculine noun is 'animate' or 'inanimate'.
In plural you have 'masculine personal' plural (almost only 'groups including at least one man') and 'not masculine-personal' plural (as the name says... basically anything else. dogs, boxes, women, houses, everything without men).
it's said that "ta" can be translated as "this, the, that". but the lesson says that "ta" is used just for nearby things.
Well, if you look just at the literal meaning, then "ta" = "this" and therefore it's just for nearby things. However, Polish and English determiners differ in usage. They differ in terms how they perceive 'closeness'. Basically, Polish [ta/ta/tamta] (and forms) are equivalent to English [this/that/that]. The middle forms overlap. "tamta" is really more like "that one over there" than just "that". The main translations in this course are always the direct ones (this=ta and that=tamta), but every form of "ta" should indeed accept [this/that/the].
When users refer to "the lesson" where exactly are these lessons? The app seems to only have excercises with transition hints
A skill that you click in the course tree divides into several lessons.
What would be translation of "This duck eats duck" rather than "This duck is eating duck"?
Are you really asking about 'eating duck' (je kaczkę) or did you mean 'bread' and focused on the difference between "eats" and "is eating"?
In general, "eats" and "is eating" can easily be translated the same way, into "je".
But there is also a so-called 'habitual' verb for "to eat", and that is "jadać", so here: "jada". This works only for Present Simple. It's not taught in this course, but you can encounter it, it's not something rare. But the plain "jeść" can easily be enough.
Why oh why is the duck eating bread, and not something suitable for ducks in the wild?
Because at this point, the words 'pondweeds' and 'earthworms' haven't been taught yet.
Probably a stupid question, bit would you still use ta if you knew the duck was a male??
With kaczka you must always use the feminine pronoun, as the noun can't change its gender.
It you feel that it's important to refer to the correct biological gender, you can use another noun - kaczor (a drake). Since that's a masculine noun, you'd need a different pronoun, in this case - ten.
"This duck eats a bread" was marked wrong. I dont unserstand it..in other lessons, similar answers were accepted.
In English, bread is uncountable, hence no indefinite article. You'd say a bread if you were describing a specific type of bread, but that's not the case here.
In general speech, if a duck were to eat bread in front of a native polish speaker, which would be a more likely way for them to describe what is happening?
Ta kaczka je chleb ‐ this duck
Kaczka je chleb - the duck
Thanks
Both seem likely to me, just like both "this duck" and "the duck" seem likely in English.