"Mieszkam we Włoszech, ale pracuję w Niemczech."
Translation:I live in Italy but I work in Germany.
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1860
This is not too far. My worries are about if this person lives in Sicily and works in Kiel :P
843
I think you could worsen it if you had to commute to Flensburg, which lies close to the Danish border, some more kilometres North of Kiel. :D
843
It depends on whether Sylt was further away from the continent than Helgoland, but the latter is obviously more troublesome to access as there are few ferries regularly travelling to this island. :D
It is declined differently though. It would be "we Włochach" in the Polish sentence.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/W%C5%82ochy
247
I lived in Warsaw for a while last year. And when I read it, I was so surprised. Could anyone explain to me the reason why that „dzielnica” is called Italia? I know we share a lot of stuff, history-wise (i.e. the national anthems, to begin with), but to have a whole district named after a foreign country... Jak miło!.
because we wouldn't be able to pronounce it otherwise.
The rules:
- we - before words that start with "w" and "f" followed by a consonant
we Francji, we Włoszech - but w Finlandii, w Warszawie
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some other words and some set up phrases.
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we mnie (in me)
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we śnie (in a dream/sleep)
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both w/we środę and w/we czwartek are correct (on Wednesday, on Thursday)
Firstly, as "Niemczech" is the Locative form, let's focus on the Nominative one: "Niemcy". It is worth pointing out that the name of the country is the same as the word for 'the German people'. So "Niemcy to kraj, w którym żyją Niemcy" (Germany is a country where Germans live) is a correct sentence.
The main theory is that the word "Niemcy" comes from the words "niemy" (mute) and "obcy" (foreign, alien). In this way, Niemcy would be therefore 'mute people', because their language was not understandable to the Slavic people, just as they wouldn't understand the Slavs. Another theory is based on the similarity to the words "nie my", meaning literally "not we". As in "These are different people than we are". Finally, some people claim that this word is based on the name of an ancient Celtic tribe called "Nemeti" or "Nemetes".
It has certainly the same origin as немец (a German) in Russian. I've been told that the word is related to some other word that meant 'mute' (and designated someone who didn't speak the local language) and that it was originally a generic word for any foreigner.
I'm curious about the other word. I think that the Polish word for Italy has a similar origin, the same as Wales, Wallachia or Rotwelsch (a language once used among thieves).
Why do the translated country names end with -ech and not -ach? I thought -ach was used for all nouns in loc.pl. case?
Even if country names are adjectives as some other languages the expected endings are -ich/-ych??
Those few countries with plural names in Polish are a bit more complicated, I think.
For example "Indie -> w Indiach", "Chiny -> w Chinach", "Filipiny -> na Filipinach"
But also "Niemcy -> w Niemczech", "Włochy -> we Włoszech", "Węgry -> na Węgrzech".
"Niemcach", "Włochach", "Węgrach" would be Locative plural forms for "Germans", "Italians", "Hungarians", actually.