"The employee has to clean the office."
Translation:Pracownik musi posprzątać biuro.
11 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
As the English sentence doesn't specify whether the office has to be 'cleaned' succesfully, or allows for an interpretation where it is his duty to do regularly... yes, you're right, it should be accepted.
1167
Does it work to say "Pracownik musi posprzątać w biurze" - cf. "w domu" in another exercise?
- 1215
My dictionary gives 'sprzątnąć', rather than 'posprzątać', as the perfective of 'sprzątać'. But when I tried to use it here, Duo accepted it only because it assumed I was misspelling 'sprzątać'. What is the status of these two perfectives?
Personally I'd consider them almost equivalent, only that sometimes you have to "clean the [object]" (put the object where it belongs), and then I would use "posprzątać" only if the object was plural, e.g. "posprzątaj zabawki" (clean the toys). "sprzątać" in my opinion works both for singular and plural objects.
Now I'm not sure if "clean" is the best English verb here...
- 1215
Yes, an alternative meaning, besides 'clean, tidy up', is 'clear away'; maybe 'put away' is better for zabawki.
I think I won't bother with the sprzątać/posprzątać distinction--too subtle!
- 1215
I think this is just an oversight in the PWN-Oxford Polish-English dictionary: the entry for 'sprzątać' refers you just to 'sprzątnąć', but there is an entry for 'posprzątać', which refers you to 'sprzątać'.