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- "Żadne jabłka nie są niebiesk…
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Yes, and it seems to act as a singular negative according to the accepted answer which is "Apples are not blue" Vs. "No Apples are not blue". Is that right?
Yup. If we were translating word for word, it would be "No apples are not blue", but the Slavic languages often feature double negatives not only meaning a single negative, but actually required for the sentence to be properly negated (but only once :D).
Could one say "Żadne jabłko nie jest niebieskie"? When does one use plural vs singular with żaden?
I guess you should keep to the grammatical number here. The meaning is virtually the same, but technically your sentence is "Żadne jabłko nie jest niebieskie".
Sure, but you could take as well as criterion to preserve the number of negations, or reflexives, or whatever, but that would be bad idea. Thing is, when you translate you lose structure and you cannot ask here to preserve number. And anyway is "no apples are blue" correct English?
I wrote the English version of this as being 'no apple is ever blue' to emphasize the żadne could this be a way of saying it?
It feels redundant. "Ever" implies that the fact underlying this statement doesn't change over time.
1235
Not redundant to me. Ever puts the emphasis on the fact that it's just not possible. It's a figure of speech.
Well, it completely forgets the word "żadne", although of course the meaning is more or less the same...
- 1508
If 'None of the apples are blue is accepted' – which is the case – then so should 'None of the apples is blue'. None means 'not one,' so it should be considered to read 'Not one of the apples is blue.' 'None ... are' (rather than 'None ... is') is another example in English of where usage that is not technically correct has become correct through acceptance.
:D
Although I don't believe "bieski" is an existing word, it could be considered to be an adjective from "bies", a rather dated word for a devil (especially if we presume there are many devils rather than just one).
"Biesy" is also a famous novel by Dostoevsky.
I thought it's worth mentioning that before the christianisation of Poland, the country's inhabitants were polytheists, so supernatural beings usually came in larger numbers (biesy, czarty = demons). Diabeł (the devil) was a greek loanword which was introduced later in order to refer to the main antagonist of the new faith.
I wrote "None of the apples is blue", and that is accepted. But the meaning of this is distinctly, if slightly, different from "No apples are blue". How would you translate these two sentences into Polish?
I'd go with "Żadne z jabłek nie jest niebieskie" for the first one.
Sentences with forms of "żaden" are hard to translate into English in a natural way, so we are more lenient with the translations.
