"Twój kot siedział na moim fotelu."
Translation:Your cat was sitting on my armchair.
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SWOIM is reflexive. The armchair doesn't belong to the cat.
NA SWOIM FOTELU = on the cat's armchair.
We discussed it and decided that "in" is acceptable, but "on" should be the main answer. Changed now.
As an (old) Englishman, I’d say it is much more normal to use “in an armchair”. It’s because the chair surrounds you when you sit in/on it. It’s an oddity. For normal chairs, eg at the table, you”d sit on it, unless of course, it belonged to someone else. So, for example, you’d say “I was sitting in the director’s chair”.
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There's nothing wrong with "sat", it should be accepted, is it?. But in "sat on armchair" the word "my" is missing...
Last time when we asked a native speaker about accepting "sat", he said that it's too risky because "sat" most likely will mean "sat down"...
British. Do you think that in the US 'sat' is more likely to mean 'was sitting'?
After all, "Please, sit" is rather an equivalent of "Please, sit down"...
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I don't really know. It could also be a regional thing, but as you can see below, native speakers have different opinions on this topic.
I agree about "Please, sit", but as you usually say that to someone who is standing, it cannot mean anything else...
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"to sit" can just as equally mean "to sit down" or "to be sitting". This is ubiquitous, not a regional thing. The same thing applies to "lie", "stand", etc.
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We already agreed that it can mean both. But the original question was if "Your cat sat on my armchair" should be accepted as a translation. Some say yes, because it means the same as "was sitting". Some say no, because it means the same as "sat down". Native English speakers on both sides...
Why is "your cat was sitting on my chair" wrong? Would it require a different preposition?
As an English speaker, I never use the word armchair. It sounds antiquated to my ears.
Yes, chair. Another American English speaker made that comment before I did, but I didn't see it previously.
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While every armchair belongs to the axiom of chairs, not every chair is an armchair. This would be my explanation for why armchair is still the correct word for such seating furniture.
Nope. “Was sitting” is a continuous action. “Sat” is the start of the sitting action.
Maybe it is. I could throw in a curve ball here as someone who lives in the North of England: it’s common to use “was sat”. Grammatically it’s incorrect but very common in speech. You will hear phrases like “I was stood at the bus stop” rather than “I was standing at the bus stop”.
Please, have merci on us, non-native-English-speakers, don't say things like that.
I think that both prepositions are correct at least for the armchair (both are accepted). Besides, it's a cat. It was probably on top of the armchair, not where you'd sit yourself ;)
Actually, both "w" and "na" are also correct in Polish. "na" of course can mean that it was on the top, but it can be used with a normally sitted person as well.
One translation of the French "fauteuil" is "easy chair." I am thinking of a stuffed arm chair. In the States, a captain's chair need not be upholstered, even though it is an armchair. Somehow I think a cat would prefer a soft chair to a hard one. Clearly the Poles borrowed the word from the French; do they also include upholstery in their concept of the product?
I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly, as "upholstery" is a new word for me and I don't know much about "tapicerka" in Polish, but I'd definitely expect a fotel to be soft.
The stuffing in an easy chair is often covered with a durable fabric. Such chairs are called "upholstered." Thanks: I, too, would expect a fotel to be soft.