"Wieczorem jest nudno."
Translation:It is boring in the evening.
45 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I'm not sure I do need the article "the" here... either way, I'm here to learn Polish. I already know how to speak English!
In English it should be "Evenings are boring", as in evenings in general. "The" implies a precision, so in Polish we would have "Wieczory są nudne"
I am still unconvinced as 'the evening is boring' or 'evening is boring' cannot be judged as too far away grammatically, because EN grammar is not a subset of PL. EN has to be as far away as it needs to be. My job is to edit transkations, and many of the persistent are those where the translator never lets their native grammar go.
Well, it's an adverb because it ends with -o. And there isn't really any subject in this sentence, it's not "The evening is boring".
We wondered about it, discussed it, and came to the conclusion that it is indeed too far from the original sentence. Deleted it.
Ah, after reading the comments twice, I see the mistake. But since both languages are not my mother tongue I am not quite sure:: Is "The evening is boring" a correct English sentence? And if yes, how would that translate into Polish (if possible) ?
I think it would mostly make sense if we interpreted "the" as "this" or that was some other, specific evening. It's definitely grammatically correct, but whether it makes sense semantically, that's more difficult to say.
863
This is very confusing! I’m English and I still think ‘the evening is boring’ should be accepted as it is written in the singular and one particular evening could be boring rather than all evenings....
Okay, there are so many votes for that that I guess it's time to give up on the strictness here and accept it. Added.
(But well, that's literally "Wieczór jest nudny").
OK, good point. Speaking for myself, I am worried at times that I am trying too hard to "speak English using Polish words," or trying to fit Polish into an English paradigm. I guess the thing to do is to refrain from trying to force our customary English patterns of saying things onto Polish, and instead learn to use the Polish ways of expressing things when we are speaking in Polish.
So, your larger point is taken.
I read the entire discussion and see no explanation that makes sense to me for why "the evening is boring" is wrong. I wrote "Evening is boring" and that was also marked wrong. What part of speech are wieczór and wieczorem? To me, "(the) evening is boring" and "evenings are boring" are equivalent phrases in English. Perhaps using the singular evening is an example of synecdoche, using a part to represent the whole. https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-synecdoche.html
- 394
It's difficult to force one to understand this Polish sentence by using English grammar. Wieczorem is an adverb. "In the evening" is an adverbial phrase, a phrase used as an adverb. Adverbs modify other adverbs. Boring/nudno is an adverb. So "in the evening"/wieczorem modifies "boring"/nudno. Your sentence uses the noun "evening" as the subject of the sentence. In Polish, that would be Wieczór jest nudny. Notice that nudny is an adjective not an adverb, modifying wieczór. The meanings are so similar even though the grammar structure is different.
I was corrected to: the evenings are boring but there I no indiation of plural in Wieczorem
Well, there are some discussions above, mostly we decided on this because it's too far grammatically, and because without being at least 'this evening' the sentence is a bit strange. I also discussed it with some natives and we decided to reject this answer.
I disagree. I'm a native English speaker. In the sentence "it is boring in the evening," the "it", unless otherwise specified, can only be assumed as "the evening". Not only is that a very clunky sentence in English, but it is also exactly the same as saying "the evening is boring," as the "correct" English version is semantially "the evening is boring in the evening". I'd recommend this question be removed, I'm afraid.
"it" isn't representing "the evening", it's a "dummy" subject (as Cambridge calls it) which doesn't stand for anything. Just like in "it is raining", it's simply a filler to fulfill the requirement of a subject for a grammatical sentence.
Must've been a bug, 'cause such things should be accepted automatically.
Polish sentence does not have any grammatical subject. So we render it into English with: It is...
You do, but that does not make it valid. There is too much translator-think here, so learning to use the language often gets pushed into second place. I am not a translator, I am trying to be a language user, so I am not interested in any kind of purity of grammatical comparison between two very different languages.
You could easily say "Wieczorami" to say that generally evenings are boring (let's say 'here at this camp the evenings are boring'). But "wieczorem" could just refer to this time of the day generally and it could work for this context. It would still be better if it wasn't suggested to you...
Can't it mean "this evening" like "right now our evening is being so boring"?
So you must say "Dziś wieczorem jest nudno" for saying something like that?
It's safer. It also sounds like your contrasting it with other evenings, because otherwise why aren't you just saying "Woah, it's so boring..."? ;)
I don't understand how the meaning of this sentence would be different to "evenings are boring". After reading through all the comments here I know it is grammatically different. But how is the meaning different? Both are generalizing evenings. And actually " Evenings" In english can be an adverb, as it is in Polish is this sentence according to previous comments. But the main problem for me is that I am left confuses about the meaning of the sentence and how/when you would use it.
- 394
In your sentence, "Evenings" is the subject noun not adverb. That would be Wieczory są nudne. in Polish.
- 394
Which one? Yours or Duolingo's?
Wieczorem, adverbial phrase, "in the evening."
Jest nudno, "It's boring".
Your sentence, subject is "evenings," verb is "are," adjective modifying the subject, "boring." Wieczory są nudne.
