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- Topic: Polish >
- "Pada deszcz."
16 Comments
I guess "Padają mężczyźni", but frankly that kinda sounds as if they were dying in front of a firing squad...
So, I guess Polish doesn't have an equivalent phrase for 'it's raining cats and dogs'?
Equivalent idiomatically - yes, but has nothing to do with any animals.
The Polish saying is "Leje jak z cebra".
"lać" here means "to pour down", "to rain intensively". It's a colloquial word, but a common one.
"ceber" used to be a big wooden bucket used to carry water or other liquids. Nowadays this word is almost only used in this saying, and many Polish people may not even know what exactly a 'ceber' is. Or rather was.
So anyway, this is literally 'It pours like from a wooden bucket'.
"padać" is a form of "to fall" used in some contexts, most important of which are raining and snowing.
It can also mean snowing or (especially) raining on its own, if the context makes it clear.
2011
This is actually something Polish has in common with Turkish! I wonder if there are other languages like that...
(Although, they really use the word rain twice: it's raining rain, it's raining snow, ...)
- 593
Meteorologists refer to 'precipitation' (a possible translation of "padać"?) when rain, hail or snow is falling.
In chemistry, a precipitate (n.) - a finely-divided solid - can form in a liquid and precipitate (v.) to the bottom of the vessel.
'precipitation' translates to "opady", I believe. "opady deszczu", "opady śniegu", or just "opady" if it's clear what we're talking about.
- 593
I heard and wrote "Pada deść" - which I think is a mis-spelling, rather than a "wrong word" as Duo asserted.
I wouldn't pay attention to 'what kind of mistake' the grading algorithm puts under the answer, it really isn't able to recognize them well.
