11 Comments
1374
This makes sense to anyone who has studied another Slavic language, but for those of you for whom Polish is the first, the present form of a perfective verb has future meaning, as it looks forward to the action being completed. There is no real future tense form for any verb except być.
It's not present form but future form. Perfective verbs don't have present form.
- 1374
Yes, that is certainly one way of thinking about it. As someone who had to learn this as a native speaker of a non-Slavic language, however, I found it much easier to think in terms of the form rather than the meaning. These verbs do not have any present meaning. They are, however, declined exactly like imperfective verbs in the present tense. This is a form the student has been using since the earliest lessons of the course. The student knows the present tense form, which is exactly what the perfective verb will follow here, though the meaning will be future. Now, the verb "to be" does have a future tense form, which is used to give imperfectives a future meaning. I would still think that, as long as nobody actually connected with this course is going to put together a Tips & Notes section, it would be much easier for speakers of other languages to know that the form they will use to express future using perfective verbs is what they have learned as the present tense form. I would say that Slavic languages, like Germanic ones, have no real future tense form, as Romance languages do, except in the verb "to be."
I know what you mean. But I think that more logical is thinking that perfective verbs cannot have present form: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/12975268
- 1374
That definitely works for some people, while thinking of it as a present works for others, particularly if they have learned the difference between past perfects and imperfects when studying Romance languages. When I was in college studying Russian, our teacher explained it to us both ways. It took quite a while for most of us to get it even with two explanations. Perhaps getting the past perfective first, as we do here in Duolingo, will help. I must say, though, that it is one thing that I would never get without some sort of explanation, which we get here in the Tips & Notes. My sister has given up on Portuguese and my daughter on German, because they use only their phones, so they never see the wonderful Tips & Notes for those Duolingo pages. I would never recommend for either to take up the Polish or Welsh, because neither of those has Tips & Notes, at least after a certain point.
As far as "way" and "method" are interchangeable... I believe that often it might be correct, while sounding a bit weird. It's kind of as if it was something scientific.
I think solution should be "rozwiązanie". You have to find "sposób" (a way) to find "rozwiązanie" (solution) at the end.
