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"Why are some words that are so short in English SO LONG IN POLISH?" - me, earlier today
Because as a general rule of thumb the allocation of words to meanings is fairly arbitrary. It works the other way around as well though ... For example: "o" in Polish = "about" in English, making the English word a whopping five times as long as the Polish, shock horror!!! :O ;)
I know you probably weren't looking for an answer. You're not alone though. I get frustrated with long words too... Polish word grammar is frustratingly specific =D
Is Kota in the genitive here because it is 'his' cat or because it is the indirect object? Still struggling with cases even after reading so much about them :(
416
It's because „potrzebować” is one of those verbs that need direct object in genitive.
If it helps, think of it like that – you rarely state the need of something you already possess, so on conceptual level, this verb negates your possession and therefore follows the normal rule of genitive with negations. ;)
Is jego kota actually considered to be a (direct) object by native speakers? :O To tell the truth, I've been thinking about this particular verb as if the sentence was "We have need of his cat."
- 416
If that helps you, there is no reason why you shouldn't, but from the grammar point of view, it is indeed a direct object… and in fact, so is 'sugar' in a sentence like this:
- I need sugar
So… It's also English language that works like that. :P
How do I learn the infinitives of the verbs on this course? Are there rules to what the stem becomes (e.g. potrzebować becoming potrzebuj-)? The best resource I have requires the infinitive in order to conjugate.
ować and awać is the most easy ending
it is always uję for ować and aję for awać
ujesz and ajesz
uje and aje
ujemy and ajemy
ujecie and ajecie
ują and ają
I have a whole tabel which includes I think 80 / 90 % of all the grammar and different cases that can occur, including nouns, conjugation, all kind of prounouns , imperativ forms, tenses. as soon as it is done i will upload it here and a native speaker can look through it.
I think this pattern is common to all verbs that end in -ować. In general I would look it up if I wasn't sure. As has been said wiktionary (English or Polish) can often provide an answer.
I don't know about rules, but English Wiktionary quite often (usually, even?) has entries for forms of verbs. For example, I searched for "potrzebujemy" and it said that it's first-person plural present of potrzebować.
Another great example of how wonderfully mysterious Duolingo's exercise texts can be. ... "We need his cat." ... Who is we? Who is he? Most importantly what is so special about his cat???
Is kota in accusative or genetive here ? I know the declension for kot is the same for both cases, but i just want to understand which case should be used here.
Genitive. "potrzebować" is one of those verbs that just needs Genitive.
If it makes it easier, you can think of it as "to have the need of", and 'of' needs Genitive.
