"I do not drink coffee before lunch."

Translation: Nie piję kawy przed obiadem.

[MattMattM]

Przed takes instrumental

[Mark_B420]

Is there something wrong with "przed obiadem nie pije kawy"? (Not sure if this is an error, or something I haven't grasped…)

[immery]

Nothing wrong, Except missing "ogonek" in ę,
Report.

[JulieBaird1]

The answer it gave for me for the translation from English to Polish is "nie piję kawy przed lunchem." Why "lunchem" and not "obiadem" ? I got it wrong because I misread the statement but was shocked to see the English word "polishized".

[Jellei]

An early American "lunch" can be called "lunch" in Polish, especially among young people, although that's not very common. But possible.

[JulieBaird1]

Thanks. A lot of English words have crept into many languages. I was just shocked to see it as the official answer instead "obiad".

[NeldeParis]

This is a copy of my answer: nie piję kawy przed obiadem. OK, so I don't type with capitals - quicker. But is that now counted as wrong? I honestly can't see any difference between my answer and the given answer, apart from the lack of a first capital letter. Am I missing something?

[Jellei]

No, I do not think that anything has changed - neither capitalization nor interpunction matters for the algorithm. Unless I'm unaware of something. So I suspect some bug, there's rarely a day for me without reading a comment like yours. Clearly the engine doesn't work perfectly and from time to time it rejects a correct answer.

[NeldeParis]

So technology is NOT god, after all. Who suspected? :)

[Garry_S]

Why may we not say "nie piję kawy do obiadu"?

[Jellei]

You may, it just means something different - that you don't drink coffee with (during) lunch.

[Garry_S]

Thanks!

[DavidONeil4]

Ah! I was going to ask why kawa was in the genitive (kawy) rather than accusative (kawę) when I remembered that transitive verbs that normally take the accusative take the genitive when the action is negated (ie in this case after "Nie"). Furthermore, as Kawa is inanimate, the genitive is different to the accusative.

I nearly did not post but then I decided that I would anyway in case there might be other people with limited experience (like me) who needed the reminder (and I could not find this point discussed in this particular thread, presumably because everyone else who has posted here already understood). Also, I think it reinforces the retention of rules when you see them applied in different circumstances than those in which they were learned.

By the way, I guess you could construct something similar in English along the lines of "I drink coffee" versus "I do not partake of coffee".

I love Polish. It's delicious, like the coffee :-)

[rfa31]

I read obiadem as "my lunch" and obiad as "lunch"

[Jellei]

It's just a matter of cases. This is the same word in different cases.

[GORDONBOXW]

There is no such word as lunchem in Polish. Obiad is the crrect word even though it says Im wrong

[Jellei]

Well, the word "lunch" exists, and its Instrumental (needed by "przed") is "lunchem". The main answer is "przed obiadem".

[BryanPickle]

So the preposition "przed" always requires the instrumental case? Which is why this sentence ends with "obiadem" instead of "obiadu" (which is the genitive case? Please correct me if that is not so...)?

[Jellei]

Yes, no matter whether it's "przed" as "in front of" or "przed" as "before", it takes Instrumental.

[BryanPickle]

Dziękuję bardzo!

[Roland440697]

Is there a way to tell when you need to use em after a word?

[Jellei]

The preposition "przed" (before/in front of) needs the noun that follows it to take the Instrumental case. -em is the most common Instrumental endings for masculine nouns, like "obiad".