"They are asking for cookies."
Translation:Proszą o ciasteczka.
20 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I am honestly struggling to understand this sentence, apart from the word ciasteczka i do not get how "proszą o" means they are asking for...it just lost me
Well... I don't know what to say, because it simply is that "prosić o" is "to ask for" (as in 'to have a request', etc.). And it takes Accusative, which is identical to Nominative for not masculine-personal plural.
We have separate verbs for 'asking' as requesting and for asking questions.
I'm just wondering why biernik is used instead of miejscownik which usually follows 'o?'
Miejscownik follows 'o' usually when 'o' means 'about' (I've seen here on Duolingo some situation which was an exception to that, but I can't find it now) - but there are other usages of 'o', and the most important ones you can find here. This is usage number 5, 'for' + accusative.
I thought ciasteczka was cookies (which is what i did and works), but the hint says ciastka (i think), which i thought meant cakes or something instead.
The people that created the course chose to teach "ciasteczka". Then other people (we) came, and considered this to be a rather strange choice. "ciasteczka" is the diminutive form. It's like saying "little cookies". "ciastka" is the basic word. We can't change the sentences to say 'ciastka' as it hasn't been put in the database, we can only accept this answer - but we can put the answer we consider a better one in the hints. Not a perfect solution, but well, that's what we can do.
A similar situation, but also a bit different is with socks. The course teaches "skarpety", which to me is an augmentative and I associate it with big, warm winter socks. (I mean normal socks for your feet, although potentially also those that you hang on Christmas, although it's not a tradition here). To me, the basic word is "skarpetki". Well, different choices.
As for "cakes"... Well, some people claim that "cake" = "cookie", but I'm really not persuaded if it's worth accepting. Even if it can be used like that sometimes, mostly it's another thing, like a birthday cake. And that translates to "ciasto". Or "tort", actually the birthday one is rather "tort urodzinowy", but you get the picture.
"pytać" - to ask a question
"prosić" - to ask for something, to make a request
why does the hint verb switch (in conjugated form) between prosic and pytac? (Sorry haven't yet got to accent marks on this laptop)?
Well, firstly, the top hint should be the appropriate one, the other may show 'other forms that are in the accepted answers in this exercise', but as only "pytają" may be appropriate here, the other hints are just 'other forms that are correct for those words somewhere else'.
The difference between those is that "pytać" is "to ask a question" and "prosić o" is "to ask for".
Why is prosza not listed as the first hint, but instead pytaja is listed first, thus is very confusing
Unless someone changed it since you commented and forgot to reply, it looks fine on my side. A bit strange (a lot of multi-word hints built on different groups of words), but when I check "asking", the top hint is "proszą" (built on 'are asking for') and when I check "for", the top hint is "proszą o" (built on 'asking for').
The hints are shared between all sentences in two courses, so sometimes it's a bit of a mess and it's almost impossible to fully control what is displayed where :/