"We are men."

Translation: Jesteśmy mężczyznami.

[Bob20020]

Can someone PLEASE explain the instrumental case for me? The only thing I understand is that it "is" something.

[arnematt]

So there are three things that somehow I had to figure out outside of Duolingo
-plural stem of men
-być uses instrumental case
-nami is instr pl for mężczyzna
Would be great if Tree 2.0 gives this context

[Fenchurch38]

Why is "My są mężczyźni" or "my są mężczyźnami" wrong? Can I use "są" at all with "my"?

[alik1989]

Są = They are
Jesteśmy = We are

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/by%C4%87#Conjugation

Also, it has to be instrumental: Jesteśmy mężczyznami.

[cmczajka]

Everyone is referring to "być" but I have not seen this at all yet in the lessons... can someone explain?

[819.kCBUulDtD6g2]

I can't open the link :( Can you please tell me which website you refered to?

[Jellei]

[link removed for safety reasons], and then the section about Instrumental.

[819.kCBUulDtD6g2]

Dzięki!

[MrsLolliepop]

That site is REALLY helpful! Thank you so much!

[Nik659150]

Thanks

[WilliamM.G]

I seem to remember that the second z had an accent (reversed of the first z) on previous lessons. Does the accent on the 2nd z disappear because "men" is in an instrumental sentence?

[Jellei]

Well, technically it's not the best thing to think about it as "the second z", because it's a separate letter. Both ż and ź are. If the alphabet developed differently, it could use a completely different signs for these sounds ;)

Anyway, you can find the declension of "mężczyzna" here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/m%C4%99%C5%BCczyzna#Declension - only a few forms have this softening of z to ź.

[Celine134914]

Why it isn't mężczyźni?

[Jellei]

The verb "być" (to be) and all its forms, like "jesteśmy", needs the noun phrase that follows it to take the Instrumental case, which here is "mężczyznami".

"mężczyźni" is the basic, Nominative form.