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- Topic: Polish >
- "This lady is not home."
"This lady is not home."
Translation:Tej pani nie ma w domu.
14 Comments
The 'not at home' sentence has this weird, if translated literally, construction: There's no X at home. Seems understandable with stuff, like sugar, or computers, but I get it why it may be surprising with people. X is in Genitive then.
So this is literally "There's no this lady at home".
And "I'm not at home" would be in fact "There's no me at home". (Nie ma mnie w domu).
197
That is lazy American usage for you: dropping the essential preposition to say "home" when correct English would say "at home"
I've just changed the main translation to 'at home'. It's closer to the Polish sentence anyway.
- 905
Thanks. So just to clarify, with pronouns, the "nie ma mnie w domu" is the best format, but with nouns, it's better to put them in front of "nie ma"?
Yes, I translated it well enough but after some hesitation. In British English I think there would be quite some head scratching before anyone understood the sentence. We say 'at home'...although we do say ' I am home now'...very strange!
What causes the difference between "I am not at home." - nie jestem w domu, & "she is not at home." - ona nie ma w domu? Assuming I am saying the first sentence properly.
The second is "Nie ma jej w domu" = literally "There has not her at home". Sure, in English it makes zero sense. This construction is not exactly an intuitive one, I guess. Your "Ona nie ma w domu" means "She doesn't have at home..." - it misses the info about what it is that she doesn't have. So simply it's not what you wanted to write.
As for "Nie jestem w domu", that's not the most usual thing to say. True, it's correct, but it's like correcting someone that thinks I'm at home. "No, I am not at home, I'm actually at the post office. I cannot look for that envelope right now".
Meanwhile, "Nie ma mnie w domu" is more common and just states you aren't there. I'm 'missing from home'.
