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- "Nigdy nie ma mnie w domu."
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The short story is that's just the way it is:
- W basenie jest woda - In the pool there is a water.
- W basenie nie ma wody - In the pool there is no water.
- W basenie nie jest woda. - That thing in the pool is not water, (but what is it? ) The sentence in Polish can be interpreted diversely as it is considered poorly phrased and the decisive impact on meaning has context
In case of nigdy nie jestem w domu this means I am never at home/There is no place I call home. If you expand the sentence with e.g. kiedy przyjeżdżają kurierzy (when the couriers come), the sentence will be understandable but severely lacking stylistically.
In the longer story I should tell about the relation between have and to be in different languages. There is a theory that in ancient times there was only one verb that had both meanings, which remnants can be seen in this być/ nie mieć. Germans when they form sentences in Perfect tense also for some reason differentiate between verbs with sein and haben.
This "sein/haben" for different verbs exists in many indoeuropean languages. E.g. Italian and Danish.
Yes. Generally to highlight a difference between verbs of motion or similar change of state, and other verbs.
It's just Genitive of "ja". And the phrase is literally "There never has no me at home", regardless of how strange it sounds in English. If the phrase was "There's no bread at home" it would be "W domu nie ma chleba" (At home there has no bread).
No, "Nie mam się" doesn't make any sense.
I would understand that in german like ,,Es gibt nie ich zu Hause" or in spanish like "Nunca hay yo en casa"
I know that both sentences are grammatically incorrect a but then I get the meaning in polish "I am never at home" easier.
Will I ever be able to say this sentence without taking a few seconds?
Sorry, still I do not understand th emeaning of the translation sentence!
I am never at home. Well, probably not literally 'never', but you spend a lot of time at work, then maybe some family, friends, etc.
Well, it's not wrong, but quite strange. Like "You all are home a lot of the time, but you know what? I'm never at home!"
Basically it's pretty rare for a pronoun other than the subject pronoun to start a sentence, it gives a lot of emphasis that rarely makes sense.
I guess it might be understood as "I am never (at) home", but I think it would be considered to be quite wrong.
Please add'I am never at home 'as a correct answer as you once suggested.
They feel pretty much equivalent to me :-) (Southern Brit. Eng.)
Nie ma translates to "there isn't". So the literal translation would be "There isn't me at home". Better to accept the Polish phrase as is and translate to "I am not home".
Thanks! I wanted to check as the 'there is never me at home" form makes sense to me
Full speed audio sounds odd - ma and mnie seem to run into each other and it sounds like:
nigdy nie mam nie w domu
Of course that might just be my slow ears not keeping up with what's being said! :-)
I think that that just happens when a word ending in a vowel is followed by another starting with a consonant. It sounds reasonable to me, but then I'm biased because I know what it's supposed to say!
I listened to it on Google translate - sounds exactly the same.
It appears the problem resides between my keyboard and chair!
Richard, make sure you check out the Netflix original 1983 and the film Cold War as well!! Also there is the dude Piotr who has the Real Polish Podcast that is super helpful for me: https://realpolish.pl/tag/polish-listening/
What are you talking about is how polish is spoken. Granted the computer might sound a bit off but Poles tend to run sounds together to make certain sound combinations easier to pronounce. It took me a couple visits to hear this. So to our ears it sounds like Nigdy nie mam niew domu....
I don't want to disprove it, but it surely isn't something that people do consciously.
I think the problem is with my ears, and it'll only be solved by listening to a whole lot more native content.
Thankfully Netflix has Ultraviolet with both Polish audio, and Polish subtitles, so I've been watching that! :)
Yes! This double negative is a feature of Polish, and other languages.
