24 Comments
Well, you have to know what case is needed with a given verb, or a preposition. "szukać" needs Genitive, so "mała torba" is in Genitive.
I don't think there's a better way to learn this than just to learn by heart... You will make mistakes, of course, but at some time you will just know.
It is "małej torby" indeed. Or "(małej) torebki", as we usually accept diminutives when it's "small something". And frankly, it seems to me that "torebka" is more common than "torba" for a woman's handbag.
I think Jellei meant that what in the nominative would be "mała torba" needs to go into the genitive.
i.e. "...so "mała torba" goes into the Genitive" -- małej torby
Yes. After all, the English is "to look <for something>" which would put the sought for item into the Dative, if English still had a Dative case :-) .
Yes, I wish there were a small list of words in all their forms for the words in the exercises.
I think i get it. Torba is feminine. So one would say mała torba. But with the verb szukam małej (jej) torby. Polish is bloody weird. The grammar is kicking my arse.
411
Thinkst you then, that I oughtn't utilise it in my next rede? ;)
P.S. Man, even my spell-check doesn't like this at all. ;)
That should be "thinkest thou", or even "Þinkest þou" if you want to get really baroque :-). Seriously though, we tend to "look for things" rather than "seek things".
- 411
Well, 'thou' is(was?) informal on the T-V distinction line, so I didn't want to presume… ;) True, though, that I forgot that 'you' is relatively new to English – I should have used 'Ye'. :P
Yeah, I know – I'm pretty sure I never heard 'to seek' used outside of military contexts. Nevertheless, we have a lot of non-native speakers taking the course, so some less natural options end up on the list of accepted answers too…
"seeking" seems to come up when you are looking for concepts / ideas rather than physical objects. E.g. "I am seeking your advice," "We are seeking shelter [from x]," "they are seeking aid"
Frankly, 'seek' is not something that would come to my mind and was often forgotten, but at every sentence that was about searching, there usually would be some user asking us to add 'seek'.
Hide-and-go-seek. The children's game that is the only (off the top of my head) example of the use of seek. The counter counts, and rest of the kids hide. When the counter is done counting, they shout "Ready or not, here I come" and procedes to find the others. Even in this game, seek is mostly just in the title. As a native speaker, I tend to use 'find' or 'search' or 'look for' before 'seek', however if it is about Quidditch-Harry Potter, then it is Seek, :)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel
"We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere."
- 147
If I remember correctly torebka is more likely to be a purse, or maybe a clutch.
more likely to be a purse.
Which is exactly the word used in (parts of) the USA for the Br. Eng. term "handbag".
I'd use "torebka" for most bags, including women's handbags, unless it's really quite a large one. Personally I would choose to teach it rather than "torba", although it's not like "torba" is an uncommon word.
Added "handbag". And "purse".
