"Do you love this man?"
Translation:Czy kochasz tego mężczyznę?
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In Polish each verb requires a specified case of noun/pronoun/adjective that follows. If a preposition is used, it can also require a specified case. Many verbs require Accusative, and "kochać" is one of them: you need to change Nominative "tamten mężczyzna" to Accusative "tamtego mężczyznę".
You can probably find a lot of explanations in the "Tips & Notes" section of the course, it is worth to read them (you need to press the lightbulb button in the skill description; if you use Duolingo on a mobile phone - check it via www, in most courses there are no Tips & Notes on mobile applications). I suggest also looking in some grammar book, e.g. http://www.skwierzyna.net/polishgrammar.pdf
In a previous question, the correct translation of "Do you love this child?" Was "Kochasz to dziecko?"
Now for "Do you love this man?" "Kochasz ten mężczyznę?" is marked as incorrect? What is causing the difference between the two?
The gender of a noun makes the difference: "dziecko" is neuter (n2), mężczyzna is masculine personal (m1). And the pronoun needs to adjust its form to the gender of the noun that it describes - see: http://sgjp.pl/leksemy/#148711/ten .
The verb "kochać" takes Accusative (B.=biernik), so both the pronoun and the noun have to fit to the appropriate forms:
- tego mężczyznę (masculine personal - m1)
- ten kraj (masculine impersonal - m3)
- to dziecko (neuter - n2)
- tę kobietę (feminine - ż)
I think you mean adverb not proverb - proverb is like a saying or a quote. And actually I think in the examples you gave, "this" is working as an adjective. Just so you know! :)
Thanks for the heads-up. I meant "pronoun", as "ten/ta/to" are indicative pronouns in Polish. I've corrected this. Thanks again!
Why can't I say "tego pana"?
Having polish relatives, this sounds natural to me. ..
1) I think not in this sentence
2) you are right it's more common to translate man as pan
3) for some reason doulingo rarely accepts it.
Polish formal pronouns aren't used to refer to someone, but only to address someone directly. That's why formal pronouns can't replace "tego mężczyznę".
But you can replace "you":
- Czy kocha pan tego mężczyznę? (Do you, sir, love that man?)
- Czy kocha pani tego mężczyznę? (Do you, ma'am, love that man?)
Sometimes mężczyzna can be substituted by ten pan (this gentleman), but that doesn't sound so great in this particular sentence.
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I've tried "Czy pani kocha tego mężczyznę " and duo does not agreed with me. Is it because of the words order or just that formal pronouns have never been sert on this sentence ?
It's the latter, our old friend "Formal pronouns are still missing from the accepted answers". Added now.
I am getting a little bit confused as to what has caused 'this' to become 'tego' within this sentence.
The rule for all masculine pronouns is: Masculine animate accusative takes the same form as masculine genitive.
Generally speaking, in YES/NO questions. In other words, if the question is not about quantity (how much/many), time (when), location (where), person (who/whom), or does not use any other wh- words - then in Polish it would begin with "czy". Except, that "czy" in many cases may be omitted.
Attention, "czy" is also a conjunction:
"czy"= "whether", "if"
"czy... czy..." = "whether... or...".
Could I make a comparison with Russian 'est'? (sorry if I am going off-topic)
As a question marker, the Russian equivalent is ли, but it's used significantly less often than czy in Polish. Also, there is an important syntactic difference, as ли (almost) always comes after the predicate and precedes the subject:
Do you love that man? - Czy kochasz tego mężczyznę? - Любишь ли ты этого мужчину?
For whether/if, ли is also used:
I wanted to know whether you love that man. - Chciałem wiedzieć czy kochasz tego mężczyznę. - Я хотел знать, любишь ли ты этого мужчину.
Аs for whether... or..., Russian does the following:
I wanted to know whether or not you love that man. - Chiałem wiedzieć, czy kochasz tego męczyznę czy nie. Я хотел знать, любишь ли ты этого мужчину или нет.
Czy can also be used for "X or Y - questions". Here, Russian does the same as English:
Coffee or tea? - Kawa czy herbata? - Кофе или чай?
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Just as I think I'm getting the hang of the forms they constantly baffle me! I think it's a matter of practice... I was temped to put ci or te or ten this time but it's tego. All the nominative/masculine/inanimate explanations stuff are helpful I'm sure however they give me a headache, I'm learning for fun not to be fluent and I'll probably always make these mistakes.
If you make a mistake 'in real life' - sure, that happens and it's not a tragedy. But given the way that language is taught on Duolingo, an answer is either correct or wrong, and we can't put a wrong one on the list of accepted answers ;)
I am not sure what you mean, but I guess, that this article could be helpful: English "that" is sometimes Polish ten, sometimes tamten
Why was the previous question of "Do you love this child" answer "Kochacie", and this is "Czy kochasz"?
- The questioning particle "czy" is optional in Polish (although my personal opinion is that the learners of Polish should not skip it).
- The English pronoun "you" means both plural and singular, while in Polish there are separate forms for singular and plural - hence, you can only guess from the context whether "you" means "ty" or "wy".
If animate masculine takes genitive (thus, comes the "tego") so why is mężczyznę not taking also the genitive form "mężczyzny"?
In this phrase is Accusative, not Genitive. The form of "to" is "tego" for Genitive (all male and neuter nouns) and Accusative (male personal nouns) - see here: http://sgjp.pl/leksemy/#148711/ten
Are you asking about the helping questions? I never considered them to be helpful for learners, but rather native speakers, mostly in school... they are "kogo? co?".
Accusative is used for the direct object of most transitive verbs.
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My answer was "Czy ty kochasz tego mężczyznę?"
Why is the "ty" wrong here? I have no idea. I thought it is optional.
It's completely redundant, but correct and accepted. Perhaps you made a typo somewhere and then the correction uses our main answer, which doesn't include "ty".