"Do you have some water?"
Translation:Macie trochę wody?
27 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I was surprised by "wody", was expecting "wodę"....(fem. sg. acc.)...but then I don't know the rules yet....
So from the declension of "woda" at... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woda#Polish
we're either using nom. plural, acc. plural, gen. sing. or voc. plural (unlikely)
which is it please?
because of "trochę" quantifiers like this require genitive.
trochę should be in accusative, but as "trochę" does not change with cases, you don't see that.
Macie szklankę wody?= Do you have a glass of water?, works the same , but you see glass in accusative, water in genitive
The 'some' part (just like "a bit", "a lot of" and I think all the other quantifiers) needs Genitive.
776
Not sure that I agree; a normal rule in English is that "some" is used with affirmative and "any with negative and interrogative - eg, "I've got some water but he hasn't got any"; "have you got any water? We desperately need some". nb, if the interrogative is used to make an offer, then "some" is normal - eg "Do you want some water?" I realise that the suggested answers try to mirror the Hungarian form, but at least for the sake of non-mother tongue English learners, we should depart too far from standard English. Hope this helps.
I would rather accept "any water" for normal "Masz wodę?" than "Masz trochę wody?"... That's my feel, at least...
- 1065
"Do you have any water?" (Macie wodę?) is just a simple question. "Do you have some water?" (Macie trochę wody?) implies a request: "Could you give me some?"
There is, but frankly, in this particular sentence it would sounds very, very strange, in my opinion.
- 888
There is, but just barely. It seems that most uses of the partitive genitive in Polish sound either strange, or very strange, or very, very strange!
Well, but what are you comparing it to? Russian? I'm pretty sure that y тебя есть воды? sounds just as strange.
I don't recall saying that partitive would sound strange before that particular example... I may be wrong of course, but I don't remember it. Do you remember something specific?
- 888
It's just that I see very little use of the partitive genitive in Polish (or Russian), while it is everywhere in French. (It hardly exists in English, where the word 'some' [possibly, 'any'] is used instead.)
For sure it's a lot more likely to use partitive in Polish with "chcieć" (to want) than with "mieć" (to have). "Chcesz wody?" sounds 100% natural and probable, same with "Chcesz kawy/herbaty/piwa/czekolady/ryżu/etc.?".