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I'm excited for this because I'm going to see the pope and I'm from Puerto Rico, so I'm learning Polish on English, and I speak Spanish. It's a little hard but I trust I can do this
I am exited for you. But as you have little time, I would inform you that duolingo is not filled with most useful phrases. If you have any questions about Polish language, Poland or WYD feel free to contact me on my board- just click my name here.
It is a shame there is so little resources for learning Polish from other languages- like Spanish. So many things are easier explained (like that nouns have gender, or that there is singular and plural you, or that verbs change with person)
Last two weeks of July young Catholics from all the world will come to Poland for World Youth Days. they will all meet in Kraków on 26th and Pope Francis will come at 28th. there will be four days in with young people (estimated 1-1,5 milion people,) will pray with pope.
Well, at least Polish is pretty easy for me since I already speak a Slavic language (Czech).
This is hard for me as a Germanic language (icelandic) speaker but this is important for me as i have polish family roots
What is the difference between "a" and "ą"? And how is the "t" (the weird one) pronounced
I'm not quite clear about the "weird 't'." Do you mean "Ł"?
"Ł" is pronounced exactly like an English "W" as in "winter," "water," etc.
"A" is pronounced "ah" like in "father."
"Ą" is pronounced like "own" or "ohm," but without fully pronouncing the final "n" or "m" in them. It's a nasal stop, almost to "n" or "m" but stop before
Dziewczynką is the instrumental case of the noun, used after the Polish verb być ("to be"), in this case jest. When the noun is the subject of the sentence, it uses the nominative case, in this case dziewczynka.
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Because it's a nasalised vowel which historically had a nasal consonant after. Take the verbs for example, lubić (to like), which is from Proto-Slavic ľubiti, the third person plural in Polish is lubią, which comes from Proto-Slavic ľubętь (ljubenti), Polish keeps the nasal but loses the dental sound while Russian лю́бят (ljúbjat) keeps the dental but loses the nasal sound.
The cognate word in English is love and lofe from Proto-Germanic lubōną, and the third-person plural is lubōnþi which again has the nasal and dental (compare German with sind as the third-person plural of sein). However for all other regular verbs, like Polish, German loses the dental hut preserves the nasal sie loben.
Another example is mężczyzna which is formed from męż + -czyzna (collective suffix), but męż preserves the same nasal sound as its English cognate man.
I am from the Czech Republic and it is great to see people struggling with this language while lots of words are the same in both Polish and Czech. :)
I'm confused - here the verb 'to be' (from inf. jesti) is conjugated like Church Slavonic, i.e. with a t-ending for 3p. sg., however, other verbs are conjugated without a suffix (e.g. pije 'drinks', je 'eats'). What is the actual rule?
But you don't use the "есть" in normal Russian language. Just "она девчонка".
That's right, in normal speech есть is omitted. However if you are emphasizing the fact that she is a girl, then you could say, «Она есть девочка!»
That might be true, but wouldn't you have to put the noun into the instrumental case then? она есть девочкой
Because you would also say Я хочу быть девочкой (weird sentence I know)
I've never used быть this way so I don't know for sure.
Yeah, it's probably grammatically proper to be in the instrumental case just like in Polish, but colloquially I imagine, «Она есть девочкой» [Ona jest' diewoćkoj -for the Polish DL students] implies a temporary state of being a girl. I imagine an argument on whether this person is a girl, and one of the people arguing would more likely say, «Она есть девочка!» [Ona jest' diewoćka]
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We won't say "Она есть девочка" - you will only meet such sentences in some old textbooks, when they give definitions.
We won't say "Она есть девочкой" as well: "есть" is omitted in Present Tense.
In Polish the expression "on/ona/to jest [NOUN in instrumental]" means "he/she/it belongs to a group of some kind". It may be "she is a girl (and not a woman or an infant)" or "he is a man (and not a woman or a little boy)". The article "the" cannot be used here - because in such situations it is not used in English.
Of course, you can say in English "she is THE girl", but then it means a defined girl - one that was mentioned before, or one known to the persons talking, etc. But in such case, in Polish, in the place of article "the", you should use one of demonstrative pronouns, like "ona jest tą/tamtą/ową dziewczynką" or one of words that can replace a demonstrative pronoun, like "ona jest wspomnianą/wymienioną/rzeczoną dziewczynką" - or (only for not personal nouns) niniejszą/przedmiotową. It is a different structure type, and instead of stating, that somebody belongs to some group, is used to state, that someone (something) is an uniquely defined person (object), who is by the way a member of that group.
And yes, in Polish there are no articles, but there is a whole lot of words that can work similarly to either definite articles (like the mentioned above - you may also see here) or indefinite articles (like jeden/jakiś/pewien/niejaki/dowolny + their forms in other genders).
With Duolingo, when translating from Polish to English, in most cases both definite and indefinite article are accepted, but this is mostly because lack of context. And it is the context that may decide whether the lack of demonstrative pronoun should be translated as indefinite article (it is the case when the phrase is at the beginning of a book, chapter, paragraph, statement etc...) or definite article (this is the case, when a mentioned person/object is already known, hence in the course of a paragraph, statement etc.) However, in some types of phrases, there are rules to follow, and this type of structure is one of such cases.
I would bet you can also create the "definite" feeling in an isolated sentence even without the demonstratives by certain word orders in Polish. Like if you wanted to say "The suitcase is on the table" without the pronouns (Kufr je na stole in Cz).
That's absolutely right. In most of properly build phrases we start (in Polish) with the known information and end with a new one. So, if we say "Walizka jest na stole", it actually suggest, that we have already known about that suitcase, so it would be "the suitcase" in English.
In Russian too, the "news" comes at the end. Bagaż na stolie Polish spelling, you are talking about where it is, on the table
couldn't read the comments on the previous lesson,bugs i guess,but why is it dziewczynką instead of dziewczynka?
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16373167 -- this will tell you everything that you need, and more. Especially Parts 1 and 2.
tl;dr version: This is an "X is Y" sentence. Normally there are two equally good options to translate it, but if X, as here, is a personal pronoun, you can use only one: X in Nominative + a form of "być" + Y in Instrumental.
Once you learn the Polish alphabet, it's more direct and consistent than the English alphabet. Polish is not full of irregularities like English.
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I can't remember the spelling of girl no matter how hard I try? Is there a trick to learning Polish spellings of things? It doesn't seem like something you can just sound out
