"Wierzyliśmy ci do dziś."
Translation:We believed you until today.
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I agree with you BenYoung84, "had" is impossible. The best translation is "We have believed you", that is to say present perfect.
The corrected translation sounds clunky in English. I think. We had believed you until today. We have believe you until today. ... crap, now not only can I not speak Polish, I am forgetting English, as well.
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No that was a bad idea. You can't combine past perfect with "until today" - the present.
I have problems with both the given translation (1) "We believed you until today" and the suggested (2) "We have believed you" (present perfect). To translate the thought into idiomatic English, I would have tried this: (3) "We used to believe you till today." Sentence #3 suggests that the believing was either a continuing or repeated act interrupted today. This would interpret the believing as an imperfect or unfinished act while it was going on. When I hear Sentence #2 "We have believed you" as a true present perfect, I feel the effect of some past act of believing radiating into the present and therefore expect to continue believing. When I get to the "until today" I find myself perplexed: should I continue believing or should the believing be interrupted? When I hear Sentence #1 "We believed you" I don't hear repetition or persistence but only a simple act, but then I am brought up short by "until today" which seems to suggest an interruption of something repeated or persisting. I will need a lot of help distinguishing the perfective and imperfective "aspects" of verbs.
Even "We did believe you till today" was rejected. The lesson heading suggest past imperfect. That led me to think that forms like "were believing" or "used to believe" were at stake, implying past continuity or repetition. If we go with simple action, as the accepted translation "We believed you until today," I fail to see why the emphatic form of the English form should not be accepted: "We did believe you...."
"past imperfect" is an imperfect name (partly because we have very few characters to use in the names). What was meant is "past of imperfective verbs".
We have a simple rule that we don't accept the emphatic "did" unless the sentence really calls for it, e.g. "Yes, we [believed/did believe] you until today".
We could argue that that's "Do dzisiaj ci wierzyliśmy", but let's not split hairs. Added.
- 888
Well, it really shouldn't be accepted, because 'until' means 'up to', so 'up until' is 'up up to'. But it is very commonly heard, and even seen in print; and Duolingo usually ignores this kind of grammatical nicety.
One of our British contributors, when asked about this construction, answered "Yes. English does like to pile up its prepositions". I guess if it's just an accepted answer...
This is one of those moments when I wonder if the learned really heard the same audio, because your impression is just so different from what I hear, and I'm afraid what I hear is really simply "wierzyliśmy"...
- 888
Maybe there's something wrong with my equipment. Anyway, I won't post any more comments about pronunciation.