On-line dictionaries do leave much to be desired, and that is why I do not entirely trust them
Print dictionaries, except for the most exhaustive, tend to leave out regular derived adjectives as well.
In Latin it would definitely be in the accusative
In Polish, different verbs govern different cases, mieć (have) governs the accusative, while mówić (speak) governs the instrumental (if you're talking about speaking a language).
Alos, unlike Latin, the case system is alive and constantly evolving in Polish (which is why it seems more irregular than it is).
Yes, that is true. That is why one should also have books on the grammar of a language, such as I have on Latin, Hellenic and German. But, a good dictionary should show the basis for how to decline nouns and adjectives and conjugate verbs. Latin Dictionaries do this, thus:
FVRCA -AE, f. a two-pronged fork. From that I know that FVRCA is a 1st Decl. noun and is - like all 1st Decl. nouns - feminine in gender. The -AE is the genitive-singular, thus FVRCAE is "the/a pitchfork's" or "of the/a pitchfork". Except, that the -AE form is also nominative-plural and dative-singular in 1st Decl. nouns. Thus, it can also be "the pitchforks" or "to/for the/a pitchfork".
SELIGO -LIGERE -LEGI -LECTVM: to choose, pick out, select. This shows the bases for all possible forms of that verb, and tells you it is a 3rd Conjugation Verb, which is identified by the infinitive form, SELIGERE since the dictionary shows that the 1st "E" in -ERE is short (a long "E" in -ERE is a 2nd Conj. Verb). The first form, SELIGO would mean, "I choose/pick out/select", since that is the 1st Pers./Sing./Pres./Indic./Active form of the verb. BTW: that is from where comes the English word "Select": SELECTVM.
The books on the grammar show how it is all used, and the remainder of the forms. It is from that one can understand all the forms of FVRCA or SELIGO, and when and where to use them.
Some Latin verbs also take their objects in cases other than the accusative, as well. But the accusative is most common. The Latin verb HABEO takes the same case as the Polish mieć: the accusative. Thus: FVRCAM HABEO: I have a pitchfork.
The on-line Polish dictionaries such as bab.la showed Pidzyn and did not show what form that was except it was masculine, and thus were not showing the -owa form, which was confusing me. I expect an actual print Polish dictionary would have shown me that.
So, therefore,:
Zaloze sie pidzynowa Angielszczyne jest wszystko co masz!
BTW: When I write in Latin I use the Roman alphabet, which had no lower case and 23 letters. It lacked "J", "U" and "W" and the character most think of a "vee" was to them an "U" (thus why W is Double U, not Double V).
Zaloze sie pidzynowa Angielszczyne jest wszystko co masz!
No. "Pidżynowa angielszczyzna" must be nominative, in any PIE derived language, including Latin, Polish and English, because it is the subject of "jest". The object of "masz" is "co", which is correctly in the accusative here, as it would be in Latin and English, as well. It's immaterial that the nominative and accusative forms of "co", "quid" and "what" are identical. The case here is clearly accusative. You have got to work on your parsing.
Ah, you are correct. Thank you. I am in the process of thinking all this through. "All" is the object of "have", and that was just dawning upon me as I looking at the sentence.
And, thus, the correct form is "wszystko", because it refers back to "pidgin English". Or, would the nominative-feminine be more correct, since Angielszczyzna is a feminine noun?
Ah-ha! I see what was causing me an issue here. It was "co". In the English there was a personal pronoun there, but in the Polish there is a relative pronoun there, instead! I was thinking "co" was you :), not "what".
That begs the question: is "co" needed in the Polish? It is not in the English.
QVID, by the way, is interrogative. The "you have" part I realize is an intransitive use of the verb and it has no object in this sentence.
Thank you again, by the way: all that was very helpful.
One of my common errors in this area is always thinking of certain verbs, such as "to have", as transitives and immediately seeking for the object of the verb. That is what I was doing, both "I bet" and "You have" in that sentence are intransitive and lack objects.
<mutter><grumble> (at myself, by the way), LOL.
Now, in English we need no relative pronoun in that sentence. It can be "I bet pidgin English is all you have!", or "I bet pidgin English is all that you have!" as the speaker prefers. As far as the Polish goes, that leaves me only with whether or not "co" is requisite.
Yeah, bab.la was showing it as "what", but I figured it could also be "that". It's the same with some Latin pronouns. I gather "co" would be employed by a Polish speaker, then?
Sie is another thing I have been asking about in that phrase, but have gotten no answer. Zaloze sie, then, is "I bet you", not just "I bet". In English, then, we are implying the objects, but in Polish the object is always spoken. Thus giving the appearance of an intransitive in the English sentence. Co is the impersonal nominative and accusative form, in this case accusative.
Zaloze sie, then, is "I bet you", not just "I bet".
No, the się is reflexive (though here it detransitivizes the verb and isn't a real reflexive). The 'you' is implied (I'm not even sure what case it would/could be...)
It's literally "I bet myself". As maf said, it's transitive and reflexive in structure, but not in meaning. However, there is no "you", implied or otherwise. It does not mean "I bet you", just "I bet".
In English it might be argued that the verbs are intransitive in this case because the objects are not spoken. Being an analytical language makes English a confusing language in many points, as we can use verbs in an intransitive manner that are strictly transitive in other languages. Just as we use nouns as adjectives. You can't do that in Latin! :)
By the way, I am discussing this as a possibility, not contradicting you.
This is the source of why almost everyone alive today thinks that our 1st Amendment means the government cannot establish a religion: they are taking the word "establishment" as a verb when it is, in fact, a noun. In Latin it cannot be confused at all: CONGRESSVS FACIAT NIHIL LEGEM DE INSTITVTIONE RELIGIONIS, ... INSTITVTIONE cannot be mistaken for a verb in Latin. One immediately knows that FACIAT is the verb, and the only verb in the clause. You can render the sentence DE FACIAT INSTITVTIONE RELIGIONIS NIHIL LEGEM CONGRESSVS and the meaning does not change.
The advantage of the analytical format is its flexibility, its disadvantage is its lack of clarity.
So, sie in that phrase is a Polish construct. In English "I bet" implies "you", or so I have always taken it. But, now I get that use of sie. Sie can also be a pronoun, I thought, meaning "you". The Polish phrase for "F--- you!" uses sie, I cross-referenced the word "sie" and bab.la or somewhere it gave that as "you".
Just as we use nouns as adjectives. You can't do that in Latin! :)
It's completely possible in Polish (trying to understand Polish through Latin only leads to heartache and frustration). Many years ago I knew someone who thought knowing Latin well would make understanding Polish easier.... and he was very wrong. think of Polish Latin and English as corners of a triangle - equally different from each other.
All languages do have those, and they can be very confusing for a those who do not know the language. I even create such things for languages I create for stories in fantasy or science fiction settings when the story needs one. Such as the phrase "def' ensamun", which literally means: "It is his!", but it indicates the same concept as the English phrase: "He can't help it!" If you drop the emphatic -mun and say just def' ensa it means "he must", or "he has to" in English, even though the literal meaning is still "It is his ..." (it is always followed by an infinitive verb).
OK, I am still having an issue with the word Doctor in Doctor Seuss. If the Polish form of Seuss is "Seussowi", is the form of Doctor also "Doktorowi"?
I think that is the last one.
@Mafektis Well, I am not equating Latin and Polish, more comparing them. They both derive from the PIE, but Polish is a Slavic language not directly related to Latin. English is derived from German, of course. It started out as a dialect of Ancient German, that then developed along a different line. I learned how to deal with Latin because of my interest in Classical History.
As thou art a linguist: is Polish an inflected language or an analytical language? I do note that like Latin the verb contains the pronoun, thus "masz" means "you have" inherently, just as the Latin HABES means the same. The personal pronouns are moot. That would incline me to think of Polish as an inflected language.
And, BTW, if Polish is an inflected language that would not indicate it's related to Latin; only that they have the same linguistic structure, of which I am sure you are aware. Old English was an inflected language, for example, but was not related to Latin despite the similarity in the Latin word VIR and the Old English Wer, both of which mean a male human being (VIR is pronounced "weer", Wer is pronounced like "ware", so they are only one vowel apart).
If the Polish form of Seuss is "Seussowi", is the form of Doctor also "Doktorowi"?
There will be several Polish forms of 'Doktor Seuss' : Doktor Seuss (nom), Doktora Seussa (gen and acc), Doktorowi Seussowi (dat), Doktorem Suessem (inst), Doktorze Seussie (loc), Doktorze Seuss! (voc).
Of all the Latin cases, only the ablativus case is missing in Polish. The PIE had some 10 cases, didn't it?
@Ziemowit Thank you. That confirms I was correct in the idea of putting Doctor in the same case as the noun it was modifying :) Since PS084 put it as the Dative: Suessowi, then I shall put Doktor in that case as well, thus: Doktorowi Suessowi. It was just that I could not use an abbreviation since the character was speaking and would not have said, "D-R Seussoh-vee ..." :)
I intend to try and find a good book on PIE, as I am interested in the topic. The thing about PIE is that it is known only from theories formulated from logical deduction and linguistic reconstruction, and the understanding of that language changes as time passes. It did have a number of cases, they believe, more than one finds in either Latin or Hellenic. But my understanding is too finite to provide a definitive answer as to how many; but it was at least 8 and could be 10.
Polish, it seems to me, does have a limited ablative: the Instrumental. It is not the whole of it, but the ablative - at least, in Latin - can be used to indicate that same thing. The Ablative of Instrument is what it is called. I actually made use of it later in the story, in fact, when the girl is ridiculing her kidnapper in Latin for being completely stupid she starts giving him advice that only a complete idiot would need:
PROELIANTI, MELIOR EST FERIRE VVLTVM MARIS CETERI PVGNO TVO, QVAM PVGNVM EIVM VVLTO TVO.
That means: "When fighting, it is better to beat the other guy's face with your fist[i], than his fist [i]with your face."
PVGNO TVO and VVLTO TVO are both Ablative of Instrument and so they do not need a preposition to say "with your fist" and "with your face": the ablative says that.
My guess is that the Ablative Case of Latin comprises three original cases altogether. Two of them disappeared as separate cases of the Latin noun or adjective having subsequently been taken over by the Ablative case. The Ablative proper which denotes the idea of separation or origin (going away from something) was called ablativus separativus. The two encompassed cases were: the Instrumental Case - called ablativus instrumentalis; and the Locative Case - called ablativus loci.
Polish, of course, must somehow convey the idea of separation, too. But should it follow the path of Latin to achieve that? Not really, in my view the function of the ablative proper (the Latin ablativus separativus) has mostly been taken by the genetive case:
ab urbe - od/z miasta (instrumental case would be: miastem) ex auro - ze złota (instrumental case: złotem) ex hac parte - z tej strony (instrumental case : tą stroną; indeed, you can say that while describing your movement, for example: 'idę tą stroną', but in this case you don't express an idea of separation)
For the two other types of the Ablative, we have our own separate cases, so you can only say:
Polish, it seems to me, does have a limited ablative: the Instrumental.
in reference to the amalgam of the older three cases which eventually formed the Ablative of the Classic Latin as we know it today.
should be: doktorowi Sussowi (Dr in this case in small letter)
But not in case when 'Doktor Seuss' is understood as the title of a book.
So in this case, I would treat 'Doktor Seuss' as an equivalent to the name of the author ('Doktor Seuss' equals 'Theodor Seuss Geisel'), so I will prefer to use 'Doktor' with the capital letter.
But I agree, there may be some ambiguity about that.
@Ziemowit That is entirely correct: the Latin Ablative Case absorbed several other cases as time passed. The Instrumental was one, but Latin has a number of different uses for the Ablative that stem from the cases it absorbed: the Ablative of Instrument is just one. There is also the Ablative of Agent, along with several others. In fact, in that Latin above there is another Ablative construct called the Ablative Absolute, used with a Present Active Participle, which is why PROELIANTI - just one word in Latin - equals two in English: "When fighting," The Ablative became an hodgepodge of a case :)
The original Ablative was, as you say, the case used for movement away from. I am doing some research on that because I intend to use PIE as the basis for a language on my Fantasy World. I intend that language to very case-heavy, making little use of prepositions.
Polish is as Polish does :) It follows its own path, I do not mean to suggest Polish should adopt Latin constructs. I realized after I made that post yesterday I had not expressed the idea of which I was speaking with sufficient clarity. The Latin Ablative includes the Instrumental, so Polish has a case that relates to the Ablative in Latin, though not the Ablative itself. I basically expressed it backwards, you might say :)
What I was - and am yet - wondering at is: Can the Polish Instrumental stand on its own to convey a relationship between words without the use of a preposition, as can the Ablative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive cases in Latin? In the above case in point, in Latin one can say PVGNO TVO and it means "with your fist" on its own: one does not need to say CVM PVGNO TVO (CVM means "with" when used as a preposition). So, say, in Polish could the above phrase be rendered as: "twoja piesca", or does it have to be "z twoja piesca"? BTW: I am not sure I structured those correctly, but that should be Instrumental Case in Polish in the first.
Once Latin lost the Locative Case, it required a prepositional phrase to express it just like with English. Most - if not all - of the prepositions used to construct the Locative take the Ablative :)
Thank you. On the 1st page there is a second paragraph with which I need help. After that, there is just one remaining Polish paragraph a bit longer than that one.
The reference to Doctor Seuss in that first paragraph was in reference to any and all of his children's books. The insult in the line is not Doctor Seuss, but the statement that the man needs to use a dictionary to understand books written by Doctor Seuss. Doctor Seuss made use of simple English words and grammatical structures: a native English speaker who would need a dictionary to understand Doctor Seuss' books would be an idiot, indeed :)
When I wrote "D-R Seussoh-vee" I meant to indicate as in the girl saying the letters D and R before the name. I try to indicate that in speech in that manner. For example: you might note I wrote Seussowi as Seussoh-vee. I am spelling it in a manner to allow an English speaker to read what he/she would have heard the girl saying, so that is how it would appear in the text of the story.
For example, that Latin sentence above does not appear in the quote where she spoke it to her kidnapper spelled in correct Latin as above; instead the reader will see:
I know to a Polish-speaker that probably does not convey the sounds correctly, but it should for an English-speaker. I hope. The Girl knows how to pronounce Latin correctly, as to where most English speakers butcher Latin so badly that in all honesty I - myself an English-speaker, LOL - cannot understand a word they say in Latin!
That issue also occurs with a lot of Polish spellings. For example, when that Girl said "Polish" in Polish at one point to someone had I spelled it correctly: Polszczyzna the readers would see that as unpronounceable gibberish. Thus, when she spoke it I wrote it as "Pohlsh-tiz-nah" in the quote. The "sh" in English - as doubtless you know - equates to "sz" in Polish spelling, as "T" in English equates to "cz" in Polish.
I show the correct spellings in footnotes for short sentences or phrases, or in the end notes for long ones like these.
I think that the words like "pidżyn", "łamana angielszczyzna" would be never used by an average, angry Pole when blaming an old fart. Let me give it a try. I'd make it a little bit more colloquial:
"Wiesz co to za język, stary pierdzielu? Założę się że w życiu byś nie zgadł! Ile ty w ogóle znasz języków? Trochę łamanego angielskiego, to wszystko! Nawet Doktora Seussa nie zrozumiesz bez słownika! A jak ktos krzyknie "Send in the clowns", to myślisz że to wołają po ciebie!"
"Stary pierdzielu?" That means something along the lines "Old f---er?", does it not? I like that one.
But, she is too literal to use a word for "broken English" in this case. The man's English was not broken, he had used some bad grammar. An example of lamana Polszczyzna exists in your translation above:
A jak ktos krzyknie "Send in the clowns", to myslisz ze to wolaja po ciebie!
That is broken Polish where an English phrase is employed in a Polish sentence. An equivalent to the primary meaning of "pidzynowa" such as pathetic, poor, ******** or such would work. But, the Girl is not a Polka, she's a Kentuckian who speaks Polish.
Could you explain to me the meaning of your lines?
