"Znacie tamto zwierzę?"
Translation:Do you know that animal?
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I appreciate that explanation. It's my ambition to learn to communicate in Polish and to some degree I will, but my grammatical knowledge of English let alone Polish is not good at all. So I never question the comments about masculine and other various types of the same word, but I do read the comments and sometimes disagreement between people. Very nice helpful course
I am extremely confused with words such as "tamto", "tamtego", and the rest of its forms. I've never heard of them before. Are they important in the Polish language? Or do they have replacements that one could use instead?
"Tamto" is 'that, that one' for neuter. "Tamtego" is Genitive either for neuter or masculine (which is "tamten").
We rarely use these words for "that", unless we want to emphasize the contrast between "this" and "that". This is why we usually accept both 'this' and 'that' for simple 'ten/ta/to'.
We can also use it when 'that' is really somewhere not close to us. Here I don't think there's any reason not to use simple "to", I believe "tamto" is here in the original sentence just to teach you that we do have direct translations for "that".
Also very confused about "tamto" in thus sentence. Is that in the accusative form?
Yes, but for neuter singular, Accusative is identical to Nominative anyway.
It isn't required. You don't need to use it, but for a learner, especially a beginner, it's advisable. "Czy" makes it clear that it's a real yes/no question. "Znacie tamto zwierzę?" on its own can be interpreted also as "What? You really know that animal? Seriously?"
If I'm not mistaken, "czy" is optional on questions. You may elaborate questions with the exact same structure you would use for affirmations, you simply add the question mark (and change the intonation when speaking, of course). It's the same in my mother language (spanish). Hope I could help. :)
569
Wait, why isn't it tamtego? This is an animate object, so shouldn't it take the animate Accusative form?
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Wait, I might have answered my own question... tamtego is only for masculine nouns, and zwierzę is neutral, which remains the same as the Nominative case, right?
Yes indeed. The animate/inanimate distinction only matters in Accusative and only for masculine nouns.
The English translation can mean either "Have you met (previously encountered) that individual animal?," or "Do you know what type of animal it is?" In Polish, are both meanings also possible?
Is c = ć in pronouncation ? Here znacie = znatshye so c = tsh but ć also = tsh ...
No, ć is like... kinda like softened T. It's rendered by ть in Russian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolo-palatal_affricate This explains very thoroughly what is Ć.