"Co to był za hałas?"
Translation:What was that noise?
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473
No comment here yet. I agree with AlexLivins that "What noise was that" should be acceptable.
It's sort of a fixed expression. It is used quite often so it may be useful to remember it:
What is that colour/smell/language?, What kind of colour/smell/language is it? = Co to za kolor/zapach/język?
I would add another usage: co to był za mecz! (what a game it was!) - expressing how awesome something was.
Jellei is right. You can also use this phrase talking about present:
Co za mecz! Co za dzień! = What a match! What a day! (note the lack of jest or to in this case)
This phrase is quite universal. Similarily to English, you can say Co za mecz! referring to the match you've watched before, you are watching right now, or you heard about it and you think it's going to be awesome. In fact it's the best way to translate that What a...! phrase.
Sound and noise are used exactly the same in general conversation. As native English speaker I can say sound should definitely be accepted.
'Hałas' has a strong negative connotation, which is not conveyed by 'sound'. A better translation would even be 'racket'.
'Noise' covers it at least partially.
And 'noise' and 'sound' are definitely not fully interchangeable:
"My neighbours were having a party last night. I couldn't sleep because of the sound noise."
- 1845
The Mets are down one run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Bases loaded. The best Met's slugger comes to the plate and the announcer shouts. "Let's here some noise!"
OK, I can agree that it's not unwanted in that specific context and in Polish the announcer would shout "Zróbcie hałas!". But in most situations you don't want any hałas ;)
- 1845
I confess, I was just having some fun with my previous comment. I know you have a good sense of humor and I just couldn't resist.
Can "Co to był tamten hałas?" be also correct ?If I do understand the below mentioned explanations, "za" has a value of exclamation and could imply "too much noise". In this possible in this context to use "zbyt" instead of "za" and write "Co to był zbyt hałas?"... Thank you for your answer.
No, none of those is a correct sentence, I'm afraid. And no, it's not that 'za' implies too much noise here... ok, "hałas" by definition is loud, but the construction itself doesn't imply that. That's a different meaning of 'za', just used in this construction.
It is more like Geradd explained it "...co za..." would mean something like "what a...", "what kind of..."
