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- Topic: Polish >
- "Tamte skarpety są stare."
23 Comments
I thought it was "these socks are old" and not "those socks are old" but is there that much of a difference between the two?
The problem is that English and Polish look at determiners quite differently. Polish uses "te/te/tamte" (and its forms) while English uses "these/those/those". That means that "those" is a lot more common than Polish "tamte". Therefore if the Polish sentence did use "tamte", it really is "those ones over there" and only "those" can be accepted.
The adjective has to match the noun it describes. "Skarpety" are 'not masculine-personal' plural. So the right form of the adjective is the same as for neuter singular: "stare".
"stary" is masculine singular.
It's hard to learn Polish with a Russian background. "СтарЫЕ" ) It has both "y" and "e".
As my small knowledge about Polish, it's because it's a adjective in plural. Many of them end in "e" when is plural. Don't know the rule, just keep it in mind, it will help a lot to know adjective in plural.
Yeah, 'the' should be acceptable for 'te', among with 'these' (main answer) and 'those'; but for 'tamte' only 'those' should work. Removed now.
38
"Those are old socks" should be accepted since, in the app version at least, it is asking for a translation (not a grammatically equivalent answer) In English, "those socks are old" and "those are old socks" ARE equivalent translations and mean exactly the same.
They are not equivalent translations.
Q: What are those?
A: Those are old socks. ☑
A: Those socks are old. ☒
I was simply referring to your statement that they are supposedly exactly the same.
Btw, how do you know which question was being asked prior to this sentence?
- 38
As a statement they are... Wife to man. Oh those are old socks! Oh those socks are old! Hence as a translation, in this case, they are equivalent... So for this exercise, as it appears in the app version, yes it should be accepted as an equivalent translation...
Are you new to Duolingo? You're not translating a text, where a lot more would be acceptable, where "My father has a very nice brother" and "My uncle is very nice" say more or less the same. You are indeed, in our course, always asked for not only a translation but also a grammatically equivalent answer, if only such a structure is correct in both languages.
We need to check if the learners understand the structure.
- 38
Fair enough if true, it should state that then. It doesn't (in this example) it asks for a translation. I've been on duolingo to see moderators accept far worse translations as acceptable. But hey as I've said already its duolingos app and they and the moderators can do what they want, there is after all nuances in language and there will often be disagreements. Asi es la Vida..... Learners can see the comments, see the discussion and come to a conclusion themselves....
