"Dobre kobiety lubią dobry obiad."

Translation: The good women like a good lunch.

[SaraRoszko]

What makes these women "good". There is a story behind this, and I want to know

[WarsawWill]

+1 for making me laugh! I'd give you a lingot but can't from the app, unfortunately.

[pavelmeshchanov]

It's a good one, Sara! By the way was Soviet Marscal Roszkowski your grand grand?

[Gatu77]

@pavelmeshchanov I suppose that you meant marshal Rokossowski, not Roszkowski. Great commander, he was Polish, mainly served in the Russian army, but he was alien in both his countries.

[SaraRoszko]

I don't believe so, the Roszkowski's I know and am related too came to US from Poland in late 1800s

[pavelmeshchanov]

I was just kidding! :)

[SaraRoszko]

lol :)

[Gatu77]

DobrZy mężczyzni, but dobRE kobiety. Why not "dobrze"? Is it because "dobrze" is already reserved for "well"?

[Jellei]

Yup, the 'masculine personal plural' adjectives will end with -i or -y, while "dobrze" is an adverb.

[Gatu77]

I wondered why there is no Z in feminine plural of dobry, whereas masculine plural contains Z. Dobre - dobrży.

[Jellei]

"dobrzy", no ż. Well, actually 'rz' makes exactly the same sound as 'ż'.

The masculine personal form is usually quite different from the other ones.

[mcneillish]

why isn't it dobra kobieta because it's feminine?

[Jellei]

This sentence is in plural, not singular.

[chris_44]

why it's dobre? I know kobieta is singular femenin so that's why we use dobra, but isn't kobiety still plural femenin?. or does kobiety is plural neuter?. Or for plural femenin nouns we use dobre? Why duolingo doesn't have a lesson first before starting every lesson that really explains things, there are in the firsts lessons but not in this one

[Jellei]

Yeah, there are only Tips and Notes in the beginning. Well, later you have to rely on the comments, you may also take a look here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16296174

There isn't exactly anything like 'feminine plural' (although people use this name sometimes) or 'neuter plural'. There are two plurals: "masculine personal" and "not masculine-personal". The first one is used for 'groups with at least one man'. The other is used for everything else. women, dogs, boxes, trees...

The "not masculine-personal" plural uses the form "dobre".

[Alekszandrovics]

If you don't like a good lunch you are a bad woman.

[jane15blue]

is there a rule with knowing which words are feminine, masculine or neuter or do you just have to learn them?

[Jellei]

Mostly those ending with -a are feminine, those ending with -e or -o are neuter and those ending with a consonant are masculine. Mostly. But that should probably be your first assumption, and then you learn the 'exceptions' by heart.

[jane15blue]

Thank you Jellei, that is really helpful.

[ChrisFlynn12]

I wrote "Dobry kobiety lubią dobry obiad" and was marked correct. But reading these comments, and after looking at the declension table of dobry, I am sure this is wrong and it should in fact be "dobre"

[Jellei]

That's true. Was it really accepted without a typo message?

[MatthewKee652397]

Same here. Accepted as correct with no indication of typos.

[4mym3tc4lf]

Why is it dobre and not dobra? We are talking about women so shouldn't it be the feminine version of the word? Dobra!

[alik1989]

Dobra is singular, dobre is plural.

[pavelmeshchanov]

Dobra (1), dobre - plural.

[CameronFos11]

So obiad cannot be considered plural?

If you were to say "We are going for lunch", you wouldn't take that as being a singular lunch, it would be deemed as plural, but you would not say "we are going for lunches". Can I not say "dobre obiad" and it be deemed as plural obiad? Or is there a different word for plural lunch in Polish?

[Jellei]

I do not understand your 'going for lunch' example. What's plural in it? Do you mean that person A gets a lunch and person B gets a lunch and that means those are two lunches? It's still one meal...

"dobre obiad" won't make sense grammatically, the plural is "dobre obiady".

[CameronFos11]

It is a little difficult to explain, but you would never use the word "lunches" in English without it sounding awful. You would use "lunch" and it would be deemed plural, so if we all 'go for lunch', there will obviously be more than one 'lunch' provided, but you would never say "we are going for lunches".

I was intrigued as to whether you would ever use 'obiad' in the same way, it is singular but deemed plural in some cases and therefore dobre would work.

[Jellei]

Well, so I'd say that it works exactly the same way here. Anyway, you can't change the adjective to a plural one without changing the noun to a plural one as well.

[diegomurcielago]

this is silly at best, and sexist in the worst case scenario.

[Jellei]

Liking food is sexist?

[diegomurcielago]

haha maybe not... depends - e.g. if the meaning is "a good woman likes (to cook) good food". but I don't have a good enough grasp of the language to make that call. there are other very cringy sentences in the lessons though: "a man needs a woman"/ "a woman needs a man" etc.

[alik1989]

Is this your way of asking: "What does this sentence mean"? Or are you just trolling?

[diegomurcielago]

not trolling.

[Jellei]

The sentences are created from a very limited set of words at first, so it's hard to not end up with some sentences that don't sound that great. Anyway, nothing in this sentence suggests they are cooking lunch, I'd read it as being about eating lunch.

I also don't think that singular "Kobieta potrzebuje mężczyzny" means that every woman needs a man.