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- Topic: Polish >
- "Młodzież nie śpi w nocy."
19 Comments
Just to clarify, młodzież means both the abstract noun "youth" (as in "youngness") and "a youth" (as in a boy or young man), as it does in English, right?
596
Neither.
Młodzież is purely a collective noun and it refers to young people as a whole.
For abstract youth, see młodość.
For a single young male person, chłopak might be the simplest word to use, but other ones might be better in a given context.
By current Wiktionary definitions: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/youth 1 and 2 are młodość, 3 and 4 depend on context, and only 5 is młodzież.
In that case the English rendering here is wrong, because "The youth does not sleep at night" would mean the same as "The young man/boy does not sleep at night". To mean what you're saying, we'd need to say it without the article: Youth does not sleep at night.
I would add , that "młodzież" can mean a group of young people.
this sentence without context says that young people in general do not sleep at night. But it may mean that a certain group of young people does not sleep at night, and gets in trouble,
or that in the specific group of people ( I have a bus trip in my imagination here) , the "youth" part of them does not sleep.
I agree with ''MichThatsMe'' A group of youngsters is the same as a group of youth in English.Could it mean youngsters are a younger group than youth??? 5-10 as opposed to 13 -18
Mostly we wanted to stay with the 'abstract noun' "youth". Also, "młodzież" are definitely teenagers at least... young adults maybe as well, in a way.
Is Młodzieży also a correct Polish word? I have only heard this word in Poland.
I think sometimes the terms are somewhat relative. A group of 20 to 25 year olds in an old folks home might be seen as youth .I see your point. Dzięki jeszcze raz
The word "does" suggests Singular as in one person.If it's a group then "The young do not sleep at night" would be right?
As this is a collective noun, yeah, I believe 'do' should be the default version. Changed now. Also added 'the young'.
Why not just use 'young people', why try to enforce a translation dictionary meaning of dodgy provenance?
You didn't reply to any specific comment, so we don't know what "it" is.
If it's "young people" that I see above, I can confirm again that this is an accepted answer.
