Hey everyone! It's my first post here, and it's a Polish question.
I have the sentence, "w tym filmie dwóch mężczyzn walczy na skrzydle podczas lotu." I found it in a grammar book, and I'm not sure if it's correct, shouldn't it be Walczą because it's 3rd person plural?
Collective numerals (liczby zbiorowe) typically are declined in the (genitive) singular form. "In this film, two men battle for....", whereas in English the verb form would clearly and unequivocally stand in the plural! Poles often makes such transference errors in English, cf. "Many wood in back of my house" vs. "Much wooded area behind my house..", better still "Many woodS.../forestS".
Wow, thanks for such a comprehensive answer. I'm going to look into this more tomorrow. The Polish language never ceases to amaze me with it's grammatical complexity.
Dwaj mężczyźni walczą (dwaj+plural masculine noun in the nominative form +verb in the 3rd person plural form) Or Dwóch mężczyzn walczy (dwóch+plural masculine noun in the genitive form+verb in the 3rd person singular form)
Similarly dwaj chłopcy siedzą/dwóch chłopców siedzi dwaj koledzy grają/dwóch kolegów gra Trzej artyści mieszkają/trzech artystów mieszka
You are probably aware that the numbers five and above, when quantifying the subject of a sentence, take the genitive case and not the nominative that an English speaker might expect. For example: "pięc kotów" and not "*pięc koty". The fact that the cats are not in the nominative is a hint that they cannot determine the number agreement of the verb, a job which now falls to the quantifier itself. The quantifier is singular so the verb is also singular. Therefore we say, "Pięć kotów siedzi na macie" and not "Pięć kotów *siedzą na macie" Perhaps a good analogy from English would be "a box of". "A box of cats is (not *are) waiting to be fed".
You are probably also aware the nouns in the plural divide into a) masculine personal and b) all others. Dwa/dwie, trzy and cztery correspond to b) and when quantifying the subject of the sentence take the nominative plural. Thus "Trzy koty siedzą na macie". The equivalent forms for a) are dwaj, trzej and czterej and these also take the nominative plural, so in the example you give we could write "w tym filmie dwaj mężczyźni walczą na skrzydle podczas lotu." HOWEVER, the above mentioned rule for five and above can be applied to two and above where the gender of the things quantified is masculine personal but here the quantifier itself also has to take the genitive form: dwóch, trzech , czterech. As before, the number agreement of the verb is singular so we finally get to "w tym filmie dwóch (gen. form) mężczyzn(genitive) walczy (singular) na skrzydle podczas lotu."
A couple of other observations concerning agreement. In the past tense, where the verb must also agree in gender with the subject, it takes the neuter form because the quantifier itself if neither masculine nor feminine: "w tym filmie dwóch mężczyzn walczyło na skrzydle podczas lotu." (However we would still write, "w tym filmie dwaj mężczyźni walczyli na skrzydle podczas lotu." etc) Perhaps the most surprising thing for me is adjectival agreement. Despite the fact that we have just said that the verb agrees in number and gender with the quantifier, for some strange reason the adjective agrees in number and case with the thing being quantified giving "Dwóch mężczyzn(gen.plural) jest(singular) mądrych (gen.plural )", "Pięc kotów(gen. pl) było (neuter, singular) głodnych(gen. pl) " etc.
After "five", the entire Polish counting system goes haywire, that is, for foreigners learning the language:-) I always try to remember: Dwa rachunki [SA].. up through "cztery" (four), from then on "Piec rachunKOW"... Dwaj przyjaciele przyda (with kreska!!!) - plural always DWOCH przyjacieli ma... - singular because of "dwoch"
"Dwóch mężczyzn walczy" - a very strange language pattern for a foreigner, indeed. But quite common in Polish, much more common in fact than a more 'normal' construction - "dwaj mężczyźni walczą". It has even its special name in grammar, but I fail to find it on the internet.
Again, it's a question of when to use collective numbers. Heard once when I was in Poland that "Dwoch" might be considered colloquial in some circles:-)
@Ziemowit Still for a beginner, whenever possible, it may be 'safer' or more natural to use a plural masculine noun in the nominative form and the plural verb (dwaj przyjaciele mają) than a masculine noun in the genitive form and the singular verb ( dwóch przyjaciół ma).
It can though occasionally be confusing where mixed gender nouns, such as "dzieci" are being counted. For example, since children can be either male or female in English (even if "dziecko" is neutral in Polish), you still say/write DWOJE dzieci maja, as though it were a plural verb form:-)
If the two children in question are males, nonetheless, "dwoje" rather than "dwaj" is used, at least until the boys reach puberty or adolescence!
That one can't say "dwaj dzieci" is obvious, as far as my first sentence, realize my mistake as "dwoje" unlike "dwaj", "dwie" or "dwa" is clearly a collective numeral designation when referring to mixed gender nouns. Cf. "Dwaj przyjaciele zgineli.... in the plural" vs. Dwoje Polakow zgineLO...", in the singular, for instance. My carelessness, that's all.
piggypacking on this numerals thread: is there ever a way to correctly use the form "cztery drzwi"? Since drzwi is plural only, it should be "czworo drzwi", but the usage of "cztery drzwi" by far trumps the supposedly correct one. Am I missing something?
(interestingly, with 3, troje drzwi is used a bit more often then trzy drzwi).
.....not to mention "dwoje" "dvojga", "troja" and so forth. Polish counting's frighteningly exact! Almost reminds me of the pitfalls of certain Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese where numerals are subdivided in the texture, density, even weight and size, of countable objects:-)
Practically makes Polish look easyLOL
Just an afterthought, but might the reason for "czworo drzwi", but "cztery okna" be that in Polish, the word "drzwi" is automatically plural, for which no singular form exists, whereas there is "okno" for one, and "oknA" for more than one? Furthermore, I believe in former times, doors in Poland where in two parts which opened separately, whereas a window was always one single unit.
there's no Polish word such as "troja" with lower case. "Troja" is exclusive for Troy. There's no such word in Polish. In counting we use "trojE", "trojGA".
I see no progress in your Polish. It's still primary school level with bad grammar.
And, NoToForeigners, is your English any the better were you not copying from GoogleTranslate, for FREE no less??!
In Polish, "dwoje" and "troje" are used for denoting a mixed group of people. The difficulty for foreigners learning Polish involves distinguishing whether or not a particular noun indicating humans is masculine, feminine or neuter.
You must have figured mine was an orthographic error rather than a lapse in knowledge.
