"This lion is bad."

Translation: Ten lew jest zły.

[Hoogeveen19]

When does you use zte, zta, zty?

[Jellei]

1. I'm afraid those are not Polish words. The special character Ł, used here, is not a variant of T. As you see in the capital letter, it's a variant of L.

2. The adjective has to match the noun it describes in terms of grammar. Just like in Spanish.

So "zły lew" = el león malo = a bad lion. It's masculine.

"zła krowa" = la vaca mala = a bad cow. It's feminine.

"złe" is neuter, there is no neuter gender in Spanish.

And I chose animals that have the same gender in both these languages, but often it will be different. The gender is generally dependent on the ending of the noun. Masculine nouns mostly end with a consonant, feminine nouns mostly end with -a, neuter nouns end with -o, -ę or -um. There are exceptions though.

[Hoogeveen19]

Thank you very much! You have a good and clear way of explaining. My mobile phone only has the dutch alphabet, so I don't have the t/l letter thing :)

[Jellei]

If you're on your mobile, you can add another keyboard ;) The easiest way would be to install SwiftKey - you could have Dutch, Spanish and Polish special characters on one keyboard :)

[Being_there]

Shouldn't it say angry?

[Jellei]

It can be 'angry', but it's not the primary meaning.

Those sentences teaching "zły" are... well, bad. The word seems to be super-basic, but it's in fact not that easy in usage and should be rather taught later in the course.

[georgce]

Is the usage similar to the German "böse"?

[Jellei]

It's been years since I took German, but I believe so.

[alik1989]

It works similarly in this sentence, but in other contexts it can also mean "schlecht", "falsch" or "sauer (böse)". So sometimes it's better to replace it with another adjective that is more specific.

[esperantokasia]

Angry. Zły is angry if charakter. Bad is niedobry=not good.

[Jellei]

I'd say that "niedobry" is mostly "niesmaczny" = "not tasty".

[NelsonCanh2]

Scar!

[Jellei]

Polish: "Skaza" :)

[delanthear]

Why 'ten' and not 'tego'? Previous question used 'tego' for 'this'.

[Jellei]

Cases. This is a simple "X is Y" sentence, X is in Nominative (the basic form), and the basic form of masculine "this" is "ten".

"tego" is Genitive, and Genitive is used in many cases, some of the most common ones are possession (To jest jedzenie tego lwa = This is this lions' food) or with negated verbs (Nie lubię tego lwa = I don't like this lion).

[Tomir_Sawi]

"Ten lew jest nie dobry" is what the translation should be.

[Jellei]

If anything, then "niedobry", but it sounds like a child talking.

[Charles738529]

Why is it Ten and not Tamten?

[Jellei]

"tamten" means "that", in fact it's even more like "that one over there".

[Beata_Sobol]

how do you know when you use bad or angry with zły złe and zła

[Jellei]

Well... whatever seems to make more sense in English in the context you imagine.