Language / doing / making - the difference? [20]

[quote=Lyzko]Confusing though, Strzyga, as to whether I meant "What do you do?" vs. "What (the heck) are you doing....?"quote]

:))
The tricky part is that both your questions - "What do you do?" vs. "What (the heck) are you doing....?" - would be the same in Polish: co robisz? (for living, or just now).

The "vs." is not Simple vs Continuous aspect, but perfective vs. imperfective. Use "zrobić" where you would use a perfect tense in English:

I've taken some pictures - zrobiłem trochę zdjęć.
It's about going all the way through with some task and finishing it.
Zrobiłem obiad - I prepared a meal and now it is ready to be eaten. I've made dinner, or: I made dinner. Anyway, the job is finished.

I think it's the same with all verbs which take z- as a prefix, like: budować - zbudować:
budowałem dom - I was building a house - we don't know if the construction has ever been finished,
zbudowałem dom - and it id finished now.
Jadłem bułkę - I was eating a roll (but did I finish?)
Zjadłem bułkę - I ate the whole roll; I finished it.

In future tense you may use both forms, as the future is never certain and you can't be sure if you manage to finish anything :)

so: zbuduję dom or będę budować dom. However, the determination to finish it is bigger with the first sentence.

I know it can be a little confusing :)

Guess I'll have to 'iron out' my translations (..no pun intended on your Forum name!):-)

:) and what has my forum name to do with ironing? I hate ironing :)))

Language / doing / making - the difference? [20]


no. sorry :)

Co zrobisz na sylwestra? - What are you going to do on New Year's Eve? (presumably this year, i.e. the nearest New Year's Eve). Practically it's the same as "co robisz na Sylwestra?"

What do you do (in general) on New Year's Eve? would be: Co zwykle robisz na/w Sylwestra?

Language / doing / making - the difference? [20]


well, no.

co tu zrobisz - what are you going to do/achieve here?
what will you do here?

it's future tense, nothing to do with the job

and you may "robić zdjęcia" too, as well as "zrobić zdjęcia".

Language / Polish nouns of unpredictable gender [50]

Good job on the whole, Derevon, but it seems a bit tricky at some points - I'd say you are much more likely to use "jabłoń" (apple tree - 124 occurences) than "gardziel" (217); the occurence rate of "paznokieć" (nail) is also suspiciously low - 196, while "dań" has 1103. I don't remember ever seeing "dań" as the Nominative case in any text, so I suppose that this frequency is the result of mixing the word with Accusative plural of the word "danie" meaning a course of a meal. I guess that the program counts only words which appear in the texts in their Nom. sing., therefore it counts "paznokieć" and omits "paznokcie". It would be best to check the meanings and judge for yourself if you are likely to need them or not.

Language / The longest polish word in existence is..... [23]

yes.
you can make it even longer:
dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięciowartościowy

Language / doing / making - the difference? [20]

byliśmy, byliście, byli etc. is male, personal, animate - meaning you use it when talking about people of male gender
byłyśmy, byłyście, były etc. is female/neuter/non-animate - all other cases (women, kids, objects)

as for robić, zrobić, wyrobić, there's more: przerobić, dorobić, nadrobić, zarobić, podrobić, odrobić, narobić, wrobić...
actually it's like the English phrasal verbs - make up, make from, make off, make up etc.
There's not much logic to it in either language, I'm afraid. There's no easy way around it and mostly you just need to memorize the right verb for every meaning.

Language / Polish nouns of unpredictable gender [50]


The ones in bold are not used very often. You can come across them once in a while, but you may as well do without them. Let's say they're for highly advanced learners.

Language / rukes in if [8]

chaza

czyj (M) - czyja (F) - czyje (N)

mostly used in questions

Czyj to pies?
Whose dog is it?

also in statements where the owner is not defined/unknown;

Nie wiem, czyj to samochód.
I don't know whose car it is.

If the owner is defined/known, we use który/która/które, just like in the examples from the previous post:

I know a boy whose father is a vet.
Znam chłopaka którego ojciec jest weterynarzem.