"That small animal is a dog."
Translation:Tamto małe zwierzę to pies.
19 Comments
That's just a way of creating sentences of the "X is Y" type, with both X and Y usually being nouns or noun phrases. They're both used in Nominative.
- Pies to zwierzę (A dog is an animal).
- Twój tata to miły człowiek (Your father is a nice man)
- Poprawna odpowiedź to "Czechy" (The correct answer is "Czech Republic")
But not only:
- Zielony to mój ulubiony kolor (Green is my favourite colour) - this could go the other way round as well.
This does not go well with using pronouns ("On to lekarz" would be a rather unnatural sentence), so be careful.
But is using "to" in both instances not repetitive? Can in not be replaced by "jest"?
Yeah, a bit, and Polish doesn't like repetitions. Sure, the second one could be replaced by "jest".
Should be rejected. Correct versions are: „Tamto małe zwierzę to pies” (to requires noun in nominative) or „Tamto małe zwierze jest psem” (noun in instrumental).
As far as I understand, "Pies, to zwierzę" is a short form of "Pies, to jest zwierzę". The verb may but does not necessarily need to be silent. Therefore, could we possibly accept the bellow translation? "Tamto małe zwierzę, to jest pies."
Zwierzątko = diminutive from "zwierzę" = little animal, so it's correct, it just depends on how the course creators look at diminutives. I'll ask.
EDIT: And yes, it was added.
If your answer was corrected from "pies" to "pieskiem", then it means you must've put "jest pies". This is wrong, "jest" needs Instrumental, which is "psem".
"pieskiem" (Nominative: "piesek") is a little dog. As the sentence is about "that small animal", accepting it makes sense.
It's not masculine. It's neuter, so "tamto" and "małe" are exactly the right forms.
Hi Jellei- your answer suggests we're getting into diminutives...a bit early? I also wrote "psem" (accusative). Diminutives are a whole other mature skillset, no doubt?
Yeah, diminutives aren't even taught in this course and they are really rarely accepted. But it makes sense that piesek/pieskiem was accepted here (just accepted), and well, if the algorithm suggested it to the user because it seemed like the closest answer, we can't really control it.
In "Tamto małe zwierzę to pies", there isn't any, really. "to" serves its function instead, but it's not a verb.
In "Tamto małe zwierzę jest psem", that would be "jest".
308
Do these two following sentences have the same meaning? Tamto małe zwierze to pies. & Tamto małe zwierze jest psem. And if they do, which is more correct and common in Polish?
Those constructions are equivalent and generally mean the same, although of course there are some shades of meaning, which are rather hard to explain. "to" is a bit like a "=" sign. "jest" is more... like a description. That animal belongs to the canine family.
In this particular sentence, I would choose "to". A simple "Yup, that's a dog". But on the learner's level, they're generally similar enough.
