"There is a desk between the window and the door."
Translation:Pomiędzy oknem i drzwiami jest biurko.
82 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
But it's not the most common word order in English for this phrase. The Polish and English most natural word orders for this type of sentence are completely different and I believe it's important to show it. We have some sentences with 'your' word order in English, but then if we only had those, people would try to translate "There is an X somewhere" starting with "Jest", which is really pretty uncommon.
Isn't it too much for one sentence, to make us mind the newly learned household words, the newly introduced preposition and the new case endings, and to top it with this theme/rheme thing which has never been stated expressly in previous lessons? Are situations like "There's a lot of things between the window and the door. Lampa jest między oknem i drzwiami. Lustro jest między oknem i drzwiami. Biurko jest między oknem i drzwiami. And a lot more things too" totally impossible in Polish?
Not that I'm insisting, it wouldn't be the only odd sentence to memorise, so I can do this too. But I've seen much more dubious variants allowed on the course and I am somewhat at a loss here, I really can't see reasons for this sentence to be rejected as completely wrong.
Those are perfectly possible and natural, but that's the thing - if you say "Biurko jest między oknem [a/i] drzwiami", that means that you know that the desk exists and state where exactly it is located. While in "Między oknem [a/i] drzwiami jest biurko", you start with the knowledge of 'the window' and 'the door', and give an information that there is a desk between them.
Teaching such nuances isn't easy (and it's not easy to be consistent in this - in terms of your 'dubious variants allowed'), but well, we shouldn't accept every sentence that is more or less similar, as it won't help understand the exact meaning.
There's an ambiguity in the english sentence though, which I think is the problem. "there's a desk between the window and door" can be used to describe the location of a desk or can be used to describe what sits between the window and door, and the only accepted translation here appears to be to the latter while without context it seems english speakers seem to assume the former.
As an example, you say "Biurko jest między oknem [a/i] drzwiami" means you start with the knowledge of the desk's existence and you describe where it was located, which is precisely what the English sentence we're asked to translate can mean: "I need you to do me a favour: go into my into my office; there's a desk between the window and the door. In the upper left drawer of that desk is an envelope I need you to bring me". This is opposed to what the only accepted translation would be, which is more like: "I don't know where to put my bookshelf" "why don't you put it between the window and door?" "there's a desk between the window and the door"
Thus, it makes sense that both translations should be accepted. If only the latter remains accepted, the English sentence should be changed so that it can only mean the latter
Yeah, for the record, I second jwkrasow's opinion above. The grammatical subtleties of "there is" constructions are too elusive to make them a firm ground for insisting on the sole Polish variant chosen by Duo. More logical would be either to make the point clearer and shape the English sentence in a more defined way to avoid ambiguity, or to allow both Polish variants. The current situation, not very logical, makes the user memorise rather than understand the principle and use it knowingly.
FINALLY! I understand your point. I retract my statement ;-)
"There is a desk" - using the indefinite article 'a' is in the word of Jellei 'unknown'
If the English sentence was "The desk..." , using the definite article 'the', then we would have a 'known' item which we could place at the beginning of the Polish sentence.
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Well, when translating from english "there is a desk..." i cannot catch a difference between polish sentences
If this is explained in a tips section for one of the modules, it would be greatly appreciated if they'd be added to the app soon (like, ASAP). I know I could just find them on the desktop version, but the app is so useful & convenient for my busy lifestyle, despite having to continually get certain nuances wrong before getting to read the comments to learn how to think about it.
It's common to start the sentence with the preposition ("Na ścianie wisi obraz" - "On the wall there hangs a painting" woah that sounds so weird in English). I'd say you start a sentence with the preposition when you're speaking about "a picture" (not defined), but when you want to say about "the picture" (defined) you start with the noun because you want to put an emphasis on the thing you're describing ("Obraz wisi na ścianie" - "The picture hangs on the wall"). But that's just a subtle difference, basically a matter of what you want to emphasize. But starting with a noun in this case ("Wisi na ścianie obraz") sounds very unnatural unless it's poetry.
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I still hate this sentence. 'Between the window and the door is the desk' is a logical english sentence and a translation of the polish.
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There is no such promise. With the plus version you get rid of the advertisements.
For the explanations: I always get them in the discussions. I ask and I get an answer. And in the Polish course, the answers usually are given quickly.
For me, just doing the exercises of the crown levels one by one is not enough to memorise the vocabulary, word order and grammar in polish. So I often only use the practice button and do a lot of Tinycards.
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What Inge said.
If you want Prime service that is essentially basic, you can try Busuu. I am - for my part - very happy with my basic Duolingo, and to be honest, I learn much about the structure of the language by "hey, what is that?! Lets look into discussion. Ahhhh... Okay? Hm. Strange, too. Okay, let's ask about this. - Cool, got it, thx." I think you even can't teach some details in normal lessons, like, to explain in each sentence why this verb or that case is used like that. Duolingo does way more, optional to see by one tap or click. And if not, as Inge said, you can ask for it. For free ^^
The Polish translation of "there is not" uses a weird construction, "nie ma". That's something you need to remember.
The translation of "there is" is much more logical, using the actual verb "to be", not "to have" like in the negated one.
Your sentence makes some sense, but only if you translate "ma" literally as "has". "Between the window and the door [known 3rd person singular subject] has a desk".