"The security guards began to eat sandwiches."
Translation:Ochroniarze zaczęli jeść kanapki.
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Just wondering why "ochroniarzy" is given as the first suggested translation in the pop-up when you hover over the words "security guards". That would be the accusative and/or genitive wouldn't it? Doesn't the popup usually suggest the translation in the correct case for the word in the context of the sentence at hand?
The text says 'zaczęli', but the audio says 'zaczeli' (without the ‘en’ sound typically made by the ‘ę’ character).
Why is this?
You actually wouldn't pronounce the ę in this example that clearly, it would sound really strange.
ęl and ęł sound just like el and eł.
Same for ął which is rather like oł (zaczął -> 'zaczoł'). I don't know if ąl exists in any word.
Is there any way to recognise these Polish words that are pronounced differently to how they are written?
Or are they just rare exceptions like the English words ‘knife’ and ‘chemist’?
What Jellei wrote, is a strict rule and not an execption. Words that do not follow any rule are indeed extremely rare and there is no way to recognize them.
I've never ever heard anyone pronounce "Jabłko" as it's pronounced in this course — extremely pretentious in my view. I would say that "japko" would be the most common pronunciation — what do YOU think Alik?
Answering instead of Alik, I guess 'japko' is the most likely pronunciation indeed.
But what is the rule?
For example, if ‘ęl’ and ‘ęł’ are always pronounced ‘el’ and ‘eł’, then why are they not written that way?
Here are all the rules regarding Polish nasal vowels on pages 15-17.
The nasal sound ę is part of the past-stem of zacząć. It is featured in all forms that contain that stem, for example in zaczęty (passive adjectival participle), zaczęto (impersonal past), zaczęcie (verbal noun). It's just that ł and l have the property of denasalizing all nasal vowels.
With the rule that you propose you would have to watch out for ł/l so you that don't write an ę before them. With the rule in place, you'll have to watch out not to pronounce an ę before ł/l.
So both rules would be logical, with the second (real) one being preferable, since vowel alternations (especially denasalization) feels more intuitive in speech than in writing.
Why is this wrong - ochroniarze zaczęli zjeść kanapki. The text corrected zjeść as jeść. I thought we had to use the perfective here right?
The 'beginning' is perfective here - there was a moment when they began, so now it is... begun ;)
But what they began is the process of eating. This is imperfective. If they began eating ten seconds ago, they definitely haven't finished. Even if they did, that's still imperfective because the main verb here is 'began'.
If you want to say that they finished eating, sure, that's perfective "Ochroniarze zjedli kanapki".
I think that "Strażnik" can be any type of guard, including a medieval guard, or a guard in a prison. "Ochroniarz" is either an employee of a security company, or a hired bodyguard.
Is there a word for female security guards? Or the word is the same, but the sentence would be "Ochroniarze zaczęły jeść kanapki". I read somewhere that regarding some occupations there are no feminine words (I guess the ones that are overwhelmingly/traditionally masculine).
I guess it's "ochroniarka" (so "Ochroniarki zaczęły..."), but it took me a moment to make sure that this word exists. Anyway, added.
Ochroniarz is the singular noun, if you add an -e you get the plural.
Ochrona is a collective term much like English security. So, saying ochrony would be like calling a group of people "securities".
Why is the suggested word ochroniarzy and not -e as in the solution. Are both valid plurals for this particular word?
Ochroniarzy is accusative/genitive, which doesn't fit here. I've updated the hints.