"Do you love this man?"
Translation:Czy kochasz tego mężczyznę?
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
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
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)
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.
826
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 ?
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...".
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?
609
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.
I am not sure what you mean, but I guess, that this article could be helpful: English "that" is sometimes Polish ten, sometimes tamten
- 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".
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
331
My answer was "Czy ty kochasz tego mężczyznę?"
Why is the "ty" wrong here? I have no idea. I thought it is optional.