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Ok, still trying to my head around the "po polsku", "po angielsku" etc. construction...
Now I'm starting to make progress. Google translate tells me that "good English" is "dobry angielski", so from this I can deduce that "angielski" is a masc. noun in the sg. Nom. form.
"po" takes acc. or loc. case, but I'm reverse engineering here because I don't know for sure which in this case (though I'm guessing loc.)
What my book says about the declension of masc. sing. loc. :
"4. Locative/ vocative singular. Velar- and soft-stem nouns have the locative/ vocative singular in -u: hotel hotel → hotelu, rcznik towel → rczniku. Others have the locative/ vocative singular in -’ e and the preceding consonant is softened: zeszycie (zeszyt -’ e, from zeszyt notebook)."
Swan, Oscar (2008-10-12). Polish Verbs Essentials of Grammar, Second Edition (Verbs and Essentials of Grammar Series) (Kindle Locations 450-454). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
I had to look up velar and see that it means at least "k" and "g" in Polish. Any consonants that I should add to this list?
Anyway, from this I can see "angielsk-" is a velar stem, and so takes "u" in the loc. masc. sing. Making "angielsku".
If "po" took acc. in this usage, we would have same as the Nom. = "angielski"
So I got it now: in this usage for speaking a language, 1) po + loc. 2) the words for language are masculine (like) "anglieski" (or possibly neuter)
Anybody who knows this subject better or can spot any mistakes in my reasoning feel free to correct. Thanks!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/po#Polish
Point 3. po + Dative -> meaning 2.
And in names of languages you should change "-i" to "-u" so it's not normal Dative which would have form "angielskiemu", "polskiemu", "francuskiemu".
Is there a particular reason why the new verbs aren't given in the Polish course like they are in the "older" courses: e.g. a mouseover over a verb would take the user to the conjugation tables for "I speak, you speak, he/she/it speaks, we speak, you speak, they speak", with different tenses included as the course progresses?
I think only the 'older' courses, developed by Duolingo itself and not volunteers, have it. For some technical reasons, I guess. It would sure be great if we could do that...
Are proper nouns never capitalised in Polish, or is this just the case with the names of languages?
Well, firstly, names of languages are adjectives in Polish.
Secondly, most of the proper nouns are capitalized, although for example words for "citizen of City X" are not.
