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- "Co jest tam na dole?"
17 Comments
What is that down there?, was mine and it got rejected. It seems basically the same.
Well, but maybe there's nothing there in fact? You assumed there's some kind of 'that'. That would be "Co to tam jest na dole" or similar.
Okay, but that seems to contradict what guliwer521 says, "We say "na dole" if we refer to something already being there. " I'm not sure if I understand.
Well, my way of thinking was like that: your friend gets to the bottom of a well and you yell to him "What's down there?" - and perhaps the well is completely empty and his answer is "Nothing, absolutely nothing!".
But perhaps you see that there is something down there, but can't see what it is - so you ask "What is that down there?" and 'that' refers to that unknown thing that you do see.
That's how I interpret it and that's why I offered an a bit different translation.
We say "na dole" if we refer to something already being there. "Na dół" is a description of a direction - going down, looking down etc.
As above with another example, it misses the 'there' part, even if it's just an intensifier.
I put an accent ont 'o' because there had been one in a previous exercise containing dol but the o sounded perfectly rounded like a =n o without an accent
Words that have ó in their basic, Nominative form, often use o in other forms. It may be possible that only Nominative and Accusative (if identical to Nominative) have it, but I'm absolutely not sure of that. I went through a few declensions and they seem to confirm it, but that may not be enough of a proof.
I thought about it and this is what I came up with:
When an inflection causes the consonant which follows the ó to move to another syllable, the letter loses its diacritical mark.
- Dół (ó and ł are part of the same syllable)
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Do-le (the consonant moves to the next syllable).
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Sa-mo-chód (ó and d belong to the same syllable)
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Sa-mo-cho-du (the consonant moves to the next syllable).
But, there is a list of exceptions. I could come up with two so far: król and ból.
It misses the "tam/there" part. Sure, it's just an intensifier, but it should be translated.
