"We are listening to that cat."
Translation:My słuchamy tamtego kota.
14 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"tamta" is feminine, and the basic word for "cat" (kot) is masculine.
"słuchać" (to listen to) takes Genitive, Genitive for "tamten kot" (that cat) is "tamtego kota".
Not only you don't need it, using it would deprive the sentence of any sense. In Polish you 'listen something/someone', not 'listen to'. Just like you hear something and not 'to something' (in Polish as well).
And this something/someone is in Genitive.
Duolingo usually doesn't seem to care about the difference between 'this' and 'that', but in this case, 'my słuchamy tego kota' was not accepted.
It's not that we don't care about the difference (for example, the main answer should always correspond exactly, this=ten and that=tamten), but the way those work in English and in Polish are just different. Yeah, 'tego' should have worked, added.
"kotki" (from "kotka") is a female cat. It's on the list of accepted answers, although it isn't taught.
1180
I believe it's because of 'agreement'.
Kot (taking kota here in the genitive form because of the verb ''słuchać' ) refers to a tomcat.
tamtej (I'm guessing) would be correct if you were referring to a female cat.
The really useful 'tamten' declension chart can be found here:
"tamtej" would be correct if you were referring to a female cat, but you'd also need a noun that explicitly mentions a female cat, which is "kotka". In this sentence, in Genitive: "tamtej kotki".
"kot" doesn't have to refer to a tomcat, it may just be 'the default name for the species'. My cat is a female one, but that doesn't stop me from saying "Mój kot" sometimes.
