"Oni nie mają kota."
Translation:They do not have a cat.
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Couldn't we accept "They do not have any cat" as another valid translation ?
That would be more like "Oni nie mają żadnego kota". Of course the meaning is the same, but there is emphasis, both in English and Polish, on "any" ("żadnego") in your sentence.
what i would ask here is why the negation of kot in accusative form is "kota" and not "koty" as lesson earlier tought us "ona nie lubi kawy" but i think i got the answer. koty is plural and would be kotow but kawy is still singular. right?
Yes. "kawa" is feminine singular, and Genitive singular of feminine nouns is almost always identical to Nominative/Accusative plural. That's quite confusing for learners at first, although after some time it can become helpful - one form less to remember.
"koty" would be the Genitive if the basic form was "kota". But it's not. Indeed "koty" is plural (Nom/Acc) and Genitive plural is "kotów".
So if "kota" is Genitive singular, what would be the basic singular form in Nominative?
Could you also say 'oni nie mają kotów' ('they do not have cats') to mean the same thing, like in English?
Well... grammatically it's different, even if it says more or less the same thing.
It works. But Aldrost is right in a way, it may make more sense to treat 'the' as 'this' here and translate it as "Nie mają tego kota".
Yes, and it's like in Spanish. "oni" is "ellos" (at least one man among 'them'), "one" is "ellas" (no men among 'them').
Very good question... there isn't one, as far as I know In theory it could probably be "manie", but it's not actually used. I guess the closest one is "posiadanie", from "posiadać" (to own, to possess), but it won't work in every context.