"We have asked them if we can listen to music."

Translation: Zapytaliśmy ich czy możemy słuchać muzyki.

[Makaronizm]

Why is accepted also the answer with je? Isn't it meaning her?

[immery]

no.

Zapytaliśmy je is for a group of only female people. Zapytaliśmy ich is for group that had at least one male person.

they can be translated as oni, or one

oni is for groups that include at least one male person

one is for group of female people, children , also for all plural feminine and neuter nouns, and plural masculine nouns that do not describe people.

if you look at any declension or conjunction chart it will show you either masculine personal/ not masculine personal or masculine personal/other forms.

ich - in this sentence is accusative form of oni
je - is accusative form of one
ją - would be accusative form of ona (she/her)

[Miknairb]

You are incredible ! Thank you so much for your kind explanation. I wish Duo teaches us in little more detail.

[RonaldJHill]

I'm still puzzled: why is there an assumption that 'we' and 'them' both refer to groups of females?

[Jellei]

There isn't any, all combinations are equally correct. [Zapytaliśmy/Zapytałyśmy] [ich/je]...

[BrianH71]

In the form of the question where you pick available words rather than enter them freeform, there will likely be only one of the combinations available to pick. This doesn't mean that the other combination is incorrect, it's just that there aren't enough words available in the pick list to have both. In my case it was only the Virile combination (at least one male person) that was in the list.

[J_Rzesiewicz]

How to you know if the verb begins with za or na?

[BrianH71]

As Jellei stated, there is no set way to find the matching perfective verb from the imperfective. For many verbs, it is a prefix such as na-, po-, za-, prze-, s-, z-, u-, wy- that when attached to the imperfective verb become the perfective. There is no way to my knowledge as a Polish learner to predict which suffix goes with which verb, you simply must memorize it for every verb. Other perfective verbs look similar to their matching imperfective verb but the latter part of the word differs, such as: kupować/kupić, zamykać/zamknąć, dawać/dać, pomagać/pomóc, or wracać/wrócić. In many of those cases one is longer than the other and if so, I've found that the longer one is almost always the imperfective. But in which specific way any particular perfective verb differs from the imperfective for these is entirely unpredictable. Again, you need to memorize each verb. Finally, there are a few imperfective and perfective verb pairs that look nothing like each other. Examples are: widzieć/zobaczyć and brać/wziąć. Once again, there is no pattern or way of knowing which verbs are like this. Memorize each one: that's the only pattern I'm aware of ;-)

[Jellei]

I don't understand the question... this verb just happens to begin with za-, that's it. I don't think it's a prefix here... and about the prefixes, I don't think there's a rule.

[F4yY9kZj]

Might one use 'poprosiliśmy' in place of 'zapytaliśmy'? The speaker might be requesting permission.

[Jellei]

But then you need to rewrite the sentence to include some noun or gerund, like "We have asked them for a permission to listen to music" = "Poprosiliśmy ich o pozwolenie na słuchanie muzyki".

[dave540119]

I put "poprosiliśmy" instead of "zapytaliśmy" but both mean "we asked". So why was my translation wrong?

[alik1989]

That's rather "we asked for...". This verb doesn't work with the conjunction czy.

[uncle_Lem]

"czy my możemy" was declined. I can see that "my" is unnecessary here, but is it incorrect?

[alik1989]

I'd say it's very unusual to explicitly mention (and thus emphasise) a subject pronoun at the second opportunity you get (zapytaliśmy would have been the first).

If there's no need to emphasise the subject, then you should omit subject pronouns altoghether.