"Dotknęło mnie to."

Translation:It has touched me.

February 12, 2016

18 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jedak

It has touched me - is this literal, or also comparable to the English expression where you are describing something as emotionally resonant?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

Both, and with the very vague 'to' - the emotional version seems more probable. However, it's emotional meaning is different than in English.

If you mean that you watched a beautiful, sad movie - that's "wzruszyć", and the sentence will be "Wzruszyło mnie to". The same if your friends gave you a really well-thought present which made you almost cry, and similar contexts which are positive.

In Polish, if something "dotknęło cię", that actually means that it offended you a bit, made you sad. "Dotknęło mnie to" could be a next phrase after a sentence saying "He said that I've gotten a bit plump" or "The boss said that my work performance is not that great, although I think that I actually work really hard".


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/bilberry99

What a great clarification, thank you!


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/QOtter
  • 2398

Great answer, thank you, that's what I was wondering, as well.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/conor.raff

What is the "to" at the end? Is it the subject of the sentence?

(At first I translated this as "It has touched it to me", assuming that the first "it" (subject) was included in the verb form (3PSN).)

If the "to" is at the end is indeed the subject, is this construction common?

I assume its to stress the "it"? or what part of the sentence does it stress, if any?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/mihxal

You have only 3 words. One of them is verb, another one is used in Genitive, there is also one in Nominative - "to" which should be the subject of the sentence. Yes, it's quite common expression and the accent falls on "to".


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/conor.raff

"to" is also the Accusative form, hence my confusion. Thanks for explaining!


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/LisaMierze

why is "to" at the end of this sentence? what is its function?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

Well, technically it's the subject, some unknown "it".

With such a word order, I'd understand it as "It hurt me" (not physically, but the way that words hurt)


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Khud0

Hi!

The first example clearly had "Dotknęło mi to", but "Dotknelo mi to" counts as a mistake. (I usually skip the special Polish symbols because I don't want to add another language on my PC or to use a mouse).

However, "Dotknelo mnie to" counts as a correct answer.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

No, "Dotknęło mi to" makes no sense. "dotknąć" takes Genitive, "mi" is Dative.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/nod032

Strange. For 'Dotknąłeś mnie' the main answer was 'Did you touch me?' but for this one, it gets present perfect as a main answer..


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

From the point of view of a Polish speaker, Present Perfect is often a past tense. And we don't distinguish between different past tenses.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/DanielDabrowski

Does this phrase have a negative meaning? Like when said by a child or a woman?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

Yes, this phrase means that 'it' (what you said or did) offended/hurt me.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MarkKulka

Even with all of the explanation, this still seems like a very weirdly constructed sentence. I imagine would need to ask (in Polish) a few follow-up questions to tease out what the speaker meant.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/JanKLinde

I agree, after reading all these comments I still don't understand why the subject ("to") is at the end of the sentence. Does it have a poetic origin? And would "To mnie dotknęło" have a different meaning?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Jellei

Hmmm... good question. This is a sentence that is not easy to translate into English, at least in Duolingo settings, where by definition we'd prefer the translation to be grammatically close to the Polish sentence.

Technically speaking, "to" is the subject here, true. But a better rendition of what this sentence actually means would be something in the direction of "I was offended/hurt by it" ('it' is probably 'what you said or did'). So it kinda is the subject, kinda is an object... I don't know if I make any sense here. I'm no syntactician, I'm not able to explain everything ;) I can only say that "Dotknęło mnie to" feels most natural to me. "To mnie dotknęło" also sounds natural and seems to mean exactly the same, but I'd put it second. I'm sorry I can't explain 'why'.

Learn Polish in just 5 minutes a day. For free.