"Mój dziadek szuka lampy."
Translation:My grandfather is looking for a lamp.
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Well, that's certainly a nicer interpretation than that grandpa simply has Alzheimer's.
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That is the problem with not having articles.
If he's looking for "the lamp" then I'd assume that the lamp is hidden. If he's looking for "a lamp" then I'd assume he was at a store.
This is Genitive Case, correct? So do all feminine nouns' endings change from -a to -y? What happens with masculine and neuter nouns with Genitive?
It is safe to say that rules for "all" anything in Polish language are rare.
Feminine nouns end in singular genitive with -i or -y. That is also true for -a ending masculine nouns.
you can take a look on this table https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Aneks:Język_polski_-_deklinacja.
masculine nouns end with -a, -u, neuter nouns end with -a
Also neuter and feminine nouns often have singular genitive=plural nominative. (Lampy)
You should think of things in terms of declensions not genders. This way you will see that most polish nouns are, in fact, regular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_morphology#Nouns
It is very common, at least in American English, to say that you are "looking for" something,when you are shopping around until you find the one that you had in mind or one that you like, and if you don't find one that you like, you might not buy one at all.
The words for 'to buy' and 'to seek' are similar in Polish and Dutch. I'm assuming there's etymology there rather than it just being a coincidence.
buy= kupować according to WSJP.pl comes form protoslavic psł. *kupovati
I cannot find etymology for szukać.
If you look under kupić, though, you can find a derivation from Germanic kaupōn/kaupjan. So it is indeed related to Dutch kopen, German kaufen, and even English "cheap." These in turn come from Latin caupo, "shopkeeper."
Szukać has a less certain etymology, but according to the dictionary, the usual explanation is indeed that it was also borrowed from Germanic: East Germanic (Gothic) suochen.
But of course, he doesn't wear glasses, as we learnt a few sentences ago! He NEEDS glasses to save him searching for everything.
My response of "My grandfather 's looking for a lamp" was not accepted, even though its more natural for me than "is looking for". Is it possible to allow the 's block to refer both to the genitive and to the contracted "is"?
