"Czemu nigdy mi nie pomogliście?"

Translation: Why have you never helped me?

[JerryMcCarthy99]

Is this pluperfect? If not, "Why did you never help me?"/"Why have you never helped me?" would be more likely English....

Also, what's the diff. between "Dlaczego" and "Czemu" (if any)? Thanks....

[Jellei]

"Dlaczego" and "Czemu" mean exactly the same thing. Some people may find "czemu" slightly colloquial and a bit 'worse', because it may be considered a Russicism.

This is normal past tense, pluperfect is pretty dead nowadays (apart from "powinien był", the past of "should"). Both of your versions work, but I agree the 'had' part looks kinda strange, so I'll go with "have" as the default one.

[achipa19]

I had this question too

[Glen624972]

Why don't you ever help me? Why not?

[alik1989]

This is present tense, as opposed to the past tense in the Polish sentence.

[Glen624972]

Never mind, I see my mistake.

[MichaelPitz]

How would the meaning of this sentence change if "pomagaliście" was used instead?

[JerryMcCarthy99]

I wonder if the "nigdy" makes the use of impf. untenable. Otherwise, it could be something like "why didn't you ever used to help me" or some such spaghetti :-).

[elizabethp713816]

Why czemu not dlaczego?

[Jxggxj]

See other comments in this forum!

[melxmik]

Why is 'mi' placed in between nigdy and nie? Why not either mi nigdy nie or nigdy nie mi?

[JerryMcCarthy99]

As it happens, "mi nigdy nie" is accepted, although not "nigdy nie mi".... The "nie" has to go before the part of the sentence being negated, which, here, is the verb "pomogliście".