"Mój szef to dobry człowiek."
Translation:My boss is a good man.
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Oh, it would have helped me to remember that "człowiek" is the singular of "ludzie" if the word in English was not "man". I actually disagree with the above, "person" sounds like the appropriate translation for "człowiek", as well as "people" is the equivalent of "ludzie". Then I guess "osoba" would better translate to "individual" on these lines...
At some point we decided to accept 'person' here and generally be less rigid about it, if it feels natural in the English sentence.
But generally, translating those words: człowiek, osoba, man, person, human - is a major pain in the... brain. They just don't correspond well.
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Whether you say man or person here, seems to me to mean the same thing, which i would have considered "osoba". But what is it trying to say specifically by choosing "człowiek"?
My boss is a good person is what is called for. There are too many anomalies in the English language that are used when the proper meaning is called for. Person covers both sexes and tells you it's human.
Why is 'człowiek' Nominative? I thought that masculine personal nouns in the Accusative take the Genitive ending, and it should therefore be 'człowieka'?
Yeah, it would be a correct Accusative, but if you translate "X is Y" sentence into Polish as "X to Y", then both X and Y are in Nominative.
Alternatively you can use a form of "być" and put Y in Instrumental: "Mój szef jest dobrym człowiekiem".
Thanks, Jellei. Prompted me to remember that bit about Instrumental use when it mentions 'to' + Nom. Many thanks.
Of course! I got confused by the picture of Tommy Lee Jones when learning the word "szefowa" in the lesson and just instinctively associated that word with a man! :D Thank you.
Good person is a fne way to express what they are, whether male or female.
That's too far from the original sentence. "nice" is usually translated as "miły", and person is not exactly the same thing as a human/man.
"guy" would rather be "facet". We usually don't accept such colloquial answers.
"mężczyzna" is a male, adult human being, while "człowiek" is any human being and English often translates it as "man".
It is rather unusual to say that someone "to dobry mężczyzna" (is a good male human), we use "człowiek" then.
I know człowiek vs man/human/person causes a lot of headache.
But if I take it to mean human/person... Are we allowed to say "Moja szefka to dobry człowiek" ??
(My female boss is a good human/person)
The female variant is "szefowa" ;) Yes, that would work, "dobry człowiek" can easily be translated to "a good person" and therefore it works well here.
You could also go with "dobra osoba", perhaps this could be a bit safer, although there's really nothing wrong with "dobry człowiek" here.
Ok thanks. My main issue was with moja szefowa being feminine yet dobry being masculine adjective.
I know it's because adjective matches the object. Still seemed strange.
So it can be Moja szefowa to dobry człowiek
And conversely Mój szef to dobra osoba
(I know we are not breaking any rules here. It's exactly as it should be. Just pointing out that it was going against my beginner's instinct)
Yes you could. But the words 'dobry' and 'człowiek' will then have to be in instrumental form.