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- Topic: Polish >
- "I am a man."
"I am a man."
Translation:Ja jestem mężczyzną.
68 Comments
People use the word "accents" to mean the Polish special characters, but I'd strongly discourage using this word, it's simply not the right one. There are no characters that mark the stress in Polish, especially that putting it wrong doesn't change anything in terms of the meaning.
Same here. I wish Dulingo would teach the alphabet. I think I would be better if I knew how the letters sound.
Dude seriously! Phonics and pronunciation are so important. If you start with the phonics of a language it would be so much easier already knowing how to read and pronounce new words before you concern yourself with grammar and meaning.
I agree it really makes no sense that we skip the alphabet and basic grammer
There weren't separate types of exercises to teach the alphabet and phonetics when this course was released.
Grammar? Grammar is taught from the very beginning.
There is a trap! My exercise is asking me which is the right translation to "I am a man". I choose Jestem mężczyzną and it answers me I made a mistake! After I choose Ja jestem mężczyzną and it said it was a mistake too!
Only practicing. No Polish person would ever confuse them ;)
But really, "jestem" and all its form are longer than "jem" and its forms... also, we don't have such illogical sentences as "He eats a man" or "He is meat".
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I try to remember that the he/she/it form (je) sounds like "yay," as in "yay, I am eating!" Haha.
I wanna cry and say SORRY for everyone when I said "OH, ENGLISH IS SO HARD".
Jest - em. I Jest - eś. You Jest - he, she, it Jest - eśmy. We Jest - eście. Your Są. They
I am struggling to understand the word endings, for example, why is this Ja jestem mężczyzną and not just Ja jestem mężczyzna?
Cześć! Jestem z Polski! Jeśli macie pytania, bez problemu możecie kierować je do mnie! :)
Hello! I'm from Poland! If you have questions, you can easily contact them! :)
Its really hard to remember how to spell it. Maybe on another bit it could be how ro spell some words becausr i think thats what everyone is finding difficult x
difference between je and jestem? im very new to polish i have no idea whats going on
I answered Jestem mężczyzną and it was marked as wrong, with Ja Jestem mężczyzną suggested as correct. Both are correct.
How do i get my phone to do the special little tail thingies on the bottoms of the letters or the 'w' version of L?
I recommend installing the app SwiftKey, which will make it possible for you to have up to 5 languages on one keyboard (e.g. English and French and Polish).
Then you just hold the right 'basic' letter and the special characters should appear.
- 501
Fun etymology fact:
Mężczyzna literally means 'a manliness', or a collective (-ina) of męski (manly, mennish), from mąż (husband, man).
It's not too dissimilar to what happened to the word 'village' in English. A 'wick' or 'wich' derives from Latin vicus, a small settlement, but its diminutive (i.e. a single house) is vicula > villa. Eventually in Late Latin and French, vicus was no longer used, and they had to invent an entirely new collective form - villaticus > village.
Unlike the other Slavic languages, Polish retains nasal vowels, so mąż feels more familiar than Czech mež, both from Proto-Slavic mǫžь, from Proto-Balto-Slavic mangjás, from Indo-European monn-, the same root as English 'man' via Proto-Germanic mannaz.
If the translation includes I at the start of the sentence and I is translated as JA. Why is this wrong. It can't be correct in any situation or just here?
It is accepted. "Ja" is of course correct, but simply redundant in most situations (unless you really need to stress the "I"), as the form of the verb makes it obvious who is the subject.
I'm not sure, because given the fact that you didn't use Polish special characters, I don't know whether you meant "mężczyzna" or "mężczyzną" ;)
"[Ja/] jestem mężczyzną" are both correct, but putting the pronoun explicitly gives more emphasis which is rarely needed and/or natural.
Both sound really bad... You have to use special characters, because they reflect very specific Polish sounds. In contrast to English, you can avoid personal pronouns 99% of the time:
I am a man - Jestem mężczyzną/ Jestem człowiekiem
But it's not Nominative. A sentence like this takes Instrumental.
You may read more about it here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16373167
Well, as I see a chromebook is a type of laptop, I guess you just need to go into settings and find the Polish keyboard. If your native language is English, you can just use it instead of the English keyboard, as it has the same buttons in the same places, plus more.
Then you click either left ctrl + left alt + the basic letter or right alt + the basic letter.
Since a man is speaking in this context, why is the ending to the word, man, end with an 'ą' rather than an 'em'?
"mężczyzna", despite ending with -a, is a masculine noun. But yeah, it looks like a feminine one and undergoes declension like a feminine one. But it will take a masculine adjective.
"tata" (dad) is another such exception.
I have polish keyboard but i don't have the e that accented in "meżczyzna" can someone please help me with that
On a phone keyboard, it should be visible when you hold E for a moment, and on a computer keyboard, under left ctrl+left alt+E or right alt+E. It's strange that you could write "ż" but not "ę"...
I've heard about Apple not having "ą", but I haven't heard about any problems with "ę" anywhere.
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I'm coming back to these after having ventured a few lessons on, to the instrumental case. On my first day I asked no questions, but now I want to know ... why are these 'I am an X, she is an X' sentences not instrumental?
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Ah, OK :) But my answer wasn't, and it was marked right ... (Not in a type-what-you-hear exercise, either).
The marking system seems to have become a bit relaxed lately, and doesn't always point out typos or missing diacritics....
- 425
Actually yes, I've noticed that elsewhere too. It always slaps my wrist when I mix up the diacritical z's, though :)
На телефоне надо придержать клавишу, чтобы появился соответствующий диакритический знак. Например, долго держишь z - появляется ż, держишь a - появляется ą. И так далее.
На компе надо держать клавишу Alt Gr, чтобы добиться того же результата.
Somewhere in the settings you must be able to enable the Polish keyboard. Unless the special characters appear already when you longpress on a 'basic' letter key, but Polish is probably not important enough for it to be present on the default keyboard.
Same, I cannot remember how to write a man correctly, and its second time because a mistake in a word it gives me incorrect answer. Annoying. I dont even really want to learn how to write. Just speak Polish and understand would be enough
Unlike English, Polish spelling is phonetic and you can learn it in a day or so. Just sayin'.
