"Co kupowałyście w środę?"
Translation:What were you buying on Wednesday?
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English Present Perfect Continous is used for situations which have been lasting until now and "on Wednesday" doesn't suggest that this is the case.
1) I think it would be on Wednesday
2) kupowałyście= were buying, kupiłyście= bought, have bought
3) I don't think "on Wednesday" and "have bought" work together in English
W + accusative? I'm guessing this is a speical rule applying to weekdays (and possibly other time related nouns?). It's not what I'd immediately consider motion, at least.
true, it's not motion, so I guess you should consider it an exception or a special rule ;)
w + days of the week, + the word "weekend"
also, for sure w + a period of time, when you mean the time that something lasts: "Zrobię to w godzinę" (I will do it and it will take me an hour)
If the translation, "What did you buy Wednesday?", is accepted, shouldn't "Co kupiłyście...?" be accepted, because Wednesday has come and gone (is completed)?
Well, there is no 1:1 equivalence between English and Polish tenses and aspects, although at first sight it may seem there is. The Simple aspect seems to work well even for Polish continuous verbs.
The main English sentence is "what were you buying", so perfective 'kupiłyście' is not an answer.
On its own, not taking the exercise into consideration, "Co kupiłyście...?" seems a lot more probable to me.
1056
Another (English) sentence that doesn't sound natural to me, unless we have something in mind like "What were you buying (when we met in the shop) on Wednesday?". Is it similar in Polish? I can't really imagine another reason for using the imperfective verb here.
That's true, it's odd in both languages. Odd but possible. I think you gave a good context, I can also imagine "You spent a lot of time shopping on three different days, didn't you? So, what was the thing you were shopping for on Wednesday?".