"They let the children drink coffee."

Translation: Pozwalają dzieciom pić kawę.

[JonniKaitale]

Hi! What is the difference between "pozwalać" and "pozwolić"? Online dictionaries say that they both mean "let", "allow" but I guess there is difference at least in use. Djiękuję bardzo! :)

[Jellei]

"Pozwolić" is perfective, "pozwalać" is imperfective. Perfective cannot be used in the present, only in the past or future tenses. It shows that the "allowing" is complete. "Pozwolili" = they allowed, it's allowed, the end. That's probably not a very good verb to show the perfective/imperfective difference on. But then again, being level 11, you probably already know quite a lot about it :)

Therefore "pozwolą" would mean "they will allow", while "pozwalają" is "they are allowing right now" or "they do allow generally".

[MichaelNie276572]

Why here is 'dzieciom' form used

[Jellei]

Because "pozwalać" (to let) takes Dative, and Dative of "dzieci" is "dzieciom".