"Germany is a wealthy country."
Translation:Niemcy to bogaty kraj.
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It would be Niemcy są bogatym krajem or Niemcy to jest bogaty kraj, If you do not use "to" you need object in instrumental case.
Is it applicable to other countries or is it only "Niemcy" in plural?
79
It depends on the country name: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polish_country_name_genders.svg
" Niemcy są bogatym krajem" - please may I ask, if Niemcy requires są and is plural, then what is the reason why the instrumental adjective and noun "bogatym krajem" is singular?
- 79
Although „Niemcy” is plural, it is still just one country. Imagine if you wanted to say "The Germans are a hard-working nation". That's similar story: a plural subject is a singular object.
The adjectives goes first in most cases, 'kraj bogaty' sounds very strange.
Read here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/21465404
So is there no such word as Niemec or Niemiec . I would like to know as I was born in Germany but had Polish parents.
- 79
There is a word "Niemiec" and it means "German man".
"Germany" and "German men" share the same word "Niemcy".
So Germany is plural takes the plural verb, but takes the masculine singular nominative(right?). This is worse than the numerals. True with all plural countries? What if the country is neuter? Would it be Chile to bogaty kraj? And is it Chile jest bogatym krajem?
- 1394
Germany (Niemcy) is plural in Nominative, too. But if you use the 'to' construction ('to' is not a verb!), that doesn't change anything in the sentence. The alternative translation is "Niemcy są bogatym krajem".
Your two sentences about Chile should be correct.
- 79
The reason why you use "bogaty" in singular here is because it agrees with the singular noun "kraj". If the sentence was "Niemcy są bogate", the adjective would be plural, as it would have to agree with "Niemcy".
And if you meant "Niemcy" as "Germans" (German people/men), then it would be "Niemcy są bogaci" ;)
It's not common for the name of the country to have this ambiguity, I'm not sure if there's any other name that has two meanings.
Thanks that explains. On the map that Alik showed in another post, it seems that the US, Italy, India and others are nonvirile plural. I assume it would be the same? I can understand the plural part (states?) but why are countries gendered as they are? Mexico is masculine and Canada feminine. Is there any logic? Also in reading my post, I didn't mean the comment about numerals to be snarky, it was a feeble attempt at humor.
- 1394
Why is a fork masculine and a spoon feminine? In Polish, the gender is more or less related to the ending of the word. Nouns ending with a consonant (Meksyk, widelec) tend to be masculine, an 'a' at the end (Kanada, łyżka) usually indicates a feminine noun. I guess there's no further logic in it.
And I am not aware of any logic about the plural names of Włochy, Niemcy, Indie, Chiny, Węgry... sure, with Stany Zjednoczone at least there's logic.
Why is it plural? Is it because of the historical fact that Germany used to be divided to several smaller kingdoms?
Polish has more countries that have plural names: Włochy (Italy), Węgry (Hungary), Indie (India), Chiny (China), not to mention the US and many island countries (which are based on more than one island)... I don't know if there's any logic to it. Well, obviously there is to the US and islands ;)
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It also seems quite logical for "Niemcy" because it means both "Germany" and "the Germans". But that doesn't work with the other mentioned countries.
It seems to me that English word "country" refers to a geographical and legal entity, but the Polish word "kraj" refers to a group of people. I've started to interpret "kraj" that way, and the grammar is making more sense to me.
- 79
Not really. There are still many countries that are grammatically singular. And even grammatically plural countries are non-virile gender, whereas groups of people are generally virile.
