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- "Many Poles live in Great Bri…
"Many Poles live in Great Britain."
Translation:Dużo Polaków mieszka w Wielkiej Brytanii.
18 Comments
Is it common to consider a group of people as a single unit grammatically? - dużo Polaków mieszka, Polacy mieszkają?
Could someone please explain the rules / guidelines for this? Thanks in advance :)
Those are polish numerals and quantifiers rules.
most quantifiers (and many numerals) need this kind of construction:
- wielu + noun in genitive+ verb in singular.
dwie dziewczynki idą (numbers that end with dwa, trzy, cztery) two girls walk
pięć dziewczynek idzie (other numbers) 5 girls walk
It will be "za tłumaczenie" here :) Unfortunately prepositions often just don't correspond between Polish and English.
Or even "za wytłumaczenie", as immery explained it whole, so the verb (gerund) should rather be perfective.
Why is is not "we" Wielkiej Brytanii as it was with "we" Wloszech in a previous exercise?
Because in "w Wielkiej" it's easier to pronounce. Generally, you use "we" if what follows starts by W/F + another consonant.
In a non-linguistic sense the Great should be dropped. We are now just a ittle offshore island
You very rarely hear Britons say 'Great Britain'. Great Britain is simply the name of the island. It does teach us Wielkiej though!
I guess people in Britain rather use "United Kingdom" as the name of the country, while in Poland we almost always go with "Wielka Brytania", apart from very official contexts, where we do use "Zjednoczone Królestwo".
It's very flattering that Poles still consider Britain to be great! I think we would use UK, but British as the adjective. United Kingdom and Great Britain are very dated terms, where I live anyway!
Nouns with quantifiers (dużo) are grammatically singular. If it were plural, it would be mieszkają.
This has already been covered in this comment section, btw.
567
Can you just say "Brytanii" like in Russian? I mean in Russian you can say just "Британии".
No. Although a person from "Wielka Brytania" is "Brytyjczyk" (a man) or "Brytyjka" (a woman), although the adjective is "brytyjski", the country is always called "Wielka Brytania".
"Brytania" is used when you refer to Britain as it was during the times of Ancient Rome and its conquests.
