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- "Jeśli ona idzie, on idzie."
16 Comments
It is perfectly acceptable in English to say :If she is going, he is going," or "If she is going, he will go."
There was a missing "/" in the Incubator that caused this not to work. Works now.
However, usually "iść" translates only to walking/going, and not simple walk/go. It is the complete... "generalness" of this sentence that makes all the options work.
For me "goes" is still marked wrong, but maybe we also shouldn't really learn this as a correct translation, if I get your above statement correctly?
Because the verb "iść" (to go) means not only "iść na piechotę" (to walk), but also "mieć zamiar/zamierzać/udać się/jechać/wybrać się/uczęszczać" (to go/to be going to/to intend/to attend), the translation "If she goes, he goes", just like the other one, "If she is going, he is going", perfectly matches the Polish sentence "Jeśli ona idzie, on idzie".
If you speak about the woman, and her shadow/stalker walking with her
at the same time you say the sentence, you would mean:
Jeśli ona idzie, on idzie - If she is walking, it/he is walking
If you speak at some other time, you have to use a different Polish verb:
Jeśli ona chodzi, on chodzi - If she walks, it/he walks
When I see this sentence, I remember that brazilian song which gives a positive energy for learning. In polish the chorus is: "Jeśli ona tańczy, ja tańczę... Jeśli ona tańczy, ja tańczę..." Check it: https://youtu.be/4Grv724IpJk
jeżeli and jeśli are interchangeable and personal preference/stylistic choice.
czy is only for relative clauses, (I asked if...)
In English, the present progressive, "is going," in this case implies future, and so mixing present progressive and future is perfectly acceptable, and, in fact, much more likely to be said by a native speaker of English.
I'm not saying otherwise, but that's "on pójdzie", not "on idzie". We strictly keep to the equivalence of tenses, because without that, the learners may quickly become confused as to what is Present and what is Future in Polish. Even if the meaning is virtually the same.
After all, if you know some Polish but you see "pójdzie" for the first time, it doesn't really look like Future Tense. Future Simple verbs look just like Present Tense verbs, it's just that they are perfective instead of imperfective. Meanwhile, in English, the grammatical structure (will go vs goes/is going) makes everything obvious even if you don't know the particular verb.
Last time I used go & it was marked wrong and this time walk is marked wrong!
I don't know what the last sentence was, but 'idzie' is Present Continuous.
