"We do not sleep in the bedroom."
Translation:Nie śpimy w sypialni.
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what's the difference between sypialni and pokui? Earlier lessons also used pokui to refer to bedroom.
I'm afraid that you clearly got one word quite wrong. "pokui" is not a word, you mean "pokój" (Nominative singular) or one of its cases (see them here).
"Sypialni" is the Genitive singular from 'sypialnia' - meaning the bedroom.
"Pokój" is simply 'a room', any room.
If this sentence was "We do not sleep in the room", that would be "Nie śpimy w pokoju."
Does w always pair with genitive (learners beware, I was wrong, it was locative)? Or are there other uses with other cases?
I cannot think of an option when it pairs with Genitive. This is Locative and it's the most common situation. When "w" just means "in", "inside", you use Locative.
There are also situations when it takes Accusative, like with days of the week (and the word 'weekend'), and when it denotes some... movement 'into' something, although English won't necessarily use 'into' then.
oh, whoops. my grammar is awful as you can see. I have to find a book.. the course here does not give notes after the first skills :( have a lingot, thanks!
That's still Locative. W kim? W czym? W ciągu. (In whom? In what?)
Those questions aren't probably helpful to learners unless they're quite advanced, but this is how we recognize what case is needed when it's not that clear at first glance.
OK, "w ciągu" is Locative, but what follows it is Genitive? - "Zadzwonię w ciągu tygodnia"?
Hi. In many other exercises, there is a tendency for the polish word order to be the opposite of the English word order. For example, "I visit my mom in October" becomes „W październiku odwiedzam moją mamę” or how "There is a mirror above the bed" becomes "above the bed, there is a mirror". Why is this sentence the opposite of that tendency? I put, "W sypialni nie śpimy" which would sound odd if directly translated into English (In the bedroom, we do not sleep), but seems to be the norm in many of these exercises. Dzięki!
I think you went a bit too far with the 'opposite of the English word order' :D
Let's start with the mirror/bed one, here we can form a rule: the usual word order of all those "There [is/are] [something] [somewhere]" sentences in Polish is to start with the place. First the place, then you inform what is located there. The other option, "Lustro jest nad łóżkiem" means "The mirror is above the bed", so we already knew about the existence of the mirror. "Jest lustro nad łóżkiem" isn't wrong, but it looks like a calque from English.
For the October sentence, it would probably be better to start the English sentence with October as well. Both orders are correct, both stress a different thing: either 'what am I doing in October?' (I am visiting my mom) or 'when do I visit my mom?' (in October). In English the same can be done by the word order, but I feel that the distinction isn't that clear and voice stress may be more crucial here. Anyway, it's a different situation.
For our sentence here... well, "W sypialni nie śpimy" is correct, but is it likely? Our sentence informs that we sleep in some other room, not in the bedroom, where one would expect it. Yours suggests that we were talking about the bedroom and you're saying that you do something else there, you don't sleep. Kinda like "In the bedroom we don't sleep" - not wrong, but odd. Even for that I'd probably still go with "Nie śpimy w sypialni".
Is locative only ever used with certain prepositions such as w, z and o? Seems to be the case, on my experience thus far. Thank you in advance, your feedback is very didactic and supportive.
"w" meaning inside: sure
"o" meaning "about" (on the topic of): sure
I think all meanings of "z" take Genitive, though.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Polish/Prepositions_as_hints_to_declensions can be useful.