Polish case question (Mężczyzna jest zimno? or Dziewczyna jest zimno?)

....hence making Polish almost seem a pleasure by comparison (...well, uh-, not really) ^^

Is Lyżko nice or not?, Did I peel the potatoes. I yes, I did.
Did I come back here, Yes, I did.
Why I don't know becuase I like grammar soso without lol.
i will start soon to write grammar poems.
i blame you, Polish grammar, for a late dinner.

Now there's an idea for the class-room.

So, just to sum it all up:
the Dative construction pertains to the feelings/sensation of the subject.
Dziewczynce (Dat.) jest zimno - she feels cold.
In a very convoluted attempt to translate it literally, that would be: To whom it feels cold? To the girl - dziewczynce - hence Dative

The Nominative construction pertains to the feelings/sensations of others, the point of reference is on the outside.
Mężczyzna jest ciepły - feels warm to the touch.
Dziewczyna jest zimna. (Note that the ending of the Adj. must be in agreement with the gender of the noun).


Usually animate nouns, as the subject must be able to feel anything :) unless you want to use personification and say, for example, "my wallet is sad... so empty" :)

I'm going to start learning Polish in the summer after my exams.
It looks really confusing! lol

Strzyga: congrats, I wish at had I teacher like you. Perfect explanation. You can be a good candidate for studing Polish, or did you study it?

Don't throw in the towel quite yet there, Chlebie, ol' man! It's a hurdle, but scarcely an insurmountable one. Remember, ONE step at a time!!! And the latter will be, resp. become your greatest ally of all; don't EVER rush with Polish. Every sound, word, ending.. is something new. As I said, I was already married with a family by the time I first started learning (..and probably will never stop!!!) and yet somehow, I MADE the time and allowed for almost monastic dedication when I wasn't juggling everything else in my life:-)

Just hang in there!

thanks, noreenb. I'm Polish :)

?? NoreenB! Przepraszam, ale czy może znaczysz "...candidate for STUDYING Polish...." [or..... TEACHING..?], since, if I'm not totally mistaken, depending upon the context, "nauczyć"/"nauczyć się" can mean both "learn" as well as "teach", yes?

I will never throw in the towel, as long as bread remains chleb.
I'm unable to really start yet due to my exams in a few weeks; but after that, I've got a whole summer of doing nothing! :) I'll make a journey to the book shop to buy a Polish learning book.

Good for you, man. Congrats on learning Polish!!

Uczę się [języka] polskiego. - I'm learning Polish
Uczę [języka] angielskiego - I'm teaching English
Jestem nauczycielem języka angielskiego - I am a teacher of English

Muszę nauczyć się języka angielskiego - I must learn English
Muszę uczyć się języka angielskiego - I must teach English

Not sure if it helps, but I think these are correct.

"Muszę nauczyć się języka angielskiego - I must learn English
Muszę uczyć się języka angielskiego - I must teach English"

Incorrect. Both sentences are with "learn".

I must teach Enchlish - Musze uczyc angielskiego.

pgtx

Yes sorry, I didn't mean to add the reflexive 'się' to "Muszę uczyć języka angislskiego" for I must teach ENglish
But it's not correct to say "Muszę nauczyć się języka angielskiego" for "I must learn English" ? It needs to also be "Muszę uczyć się angielskiego"? In this case 'nauczyć' is always 'learn' and never 'teach'?

Strzyga, you are I think a translator or teacher because your comments about Polish language were always amazingly good for me. Am I right?
Candidate, I didn't mean to offend anybody, just somebody like Strzyga has a natural talent for explaining meanders of both fascinating and wonderful my native grammar.

Lyzko I learn -Uczę się (ja). I learn myself.
I teach somebody, so: Uczę kogoś.
I teach who? what? Kogo?, co? (Biernik - B case) I teach Nancy. I teach her. i teach you. Uczę ciebie, and so on.
After dinner, (I had a delicious fish) welcome Polish grammar.
:)

I'd like to add that this problem was already talked over at least 2 times, in threads:
'lubię, lubisz' - Infinitive (post #68)
Need some Polish language help.....with a twist! (post # 27)

In those threads I was talking about the construction jest mi zimno because it was the problematic sentence which some user had brought up, but of course the same applies here :)

Mężczyźnie jest zimno
Czy jest mu zimno?
Komu jest zimno?
Jemu jest zimno.


wrong. It's singular. Plural form would be:

Mężczyznom jest zimno.

We can also go into specific questions like:
Dlaczego jest im zimno?
Kiedy mężczyznom jest zimno?
Od kiedy mężczyznom jest zimno.
Gdzie jest im zimno?
Kiedy będzie im ciepło?

It's correct.


No, no. It's not about that.
Uczyć się - learn (myself)
Nauczyć się - learn (myself)
Uczyć (kogoś) - teach (somebody)
Nauczyć (kogoś) - teach (somebody)

To learn what is the difference between uczyć and nauczyć you must read a bit about czasowniki dokonane (verbs of finished action = perfective) and niedokonane (verbs of unfinished action = imperfective)

There was already an extensive thread about it:
Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs?
I also recommend to read the wikipedia entries about imperfective and perfective aspects of verbs.

yes you are... still, expressions like "predicative sentence" or "zdanie orzecznikowe" make me scared. A bit of simple logic goes a long way though.


Indeed it was. But, as they say, there's never too much of a good thing...

Correct/corrected :(

(reminds self to not read translation threads when I've just woken up :( ).

"I learn BY myself"
"You learn BY yourself" etc..

I presume this is what was meant, am I right?

... or even "I TEACH myself..", meaning "I'm learning.......by myself/on my own"???

Not trying to be intentionally difficult, only that sometimes when native Polish speakers translate from Polish (depsite their often excellent English explanations, i.e. Strzyga's, occasionally something gets lost! On the other hand, were I to translate my English-language explanations INTO Polish, I'm sure things might be off as well:-)

Does it really matter?

"Uczyc" puts you in the role of a teacher, whereas "uczyć się" will always put you in the role of a learner. "Uczę się angielskiego" may both mean that I learn English by myself or that I attend English language classes as a learner.

Isn't there a little, subtle difference between "I learn English myself" and "I learn English by myself"?

Marry: - You don't even know how difficult English is!
Paul: - But I do! I learn English myself! [And he doesn't necessarily learn by himself, he attends English language classes to learn the language.]

a.k., Zorro's A-number one right on!!! Naturally it makes a "difference" and a BIG one:-)

How come WE all must be sooooo precise when speaking any one of a number of European languages, but YOU (not "you a.k., but "you" generically) can be as imprecise and downright sloppy as you wish when speaking the language of Shakespeare??

Do I sense a bit of a double standard here?

Another aspect of English that raises eyebrows is the pronunciation of vowels the American Way or the British Way. When I was a tourist in Poland in 1999 our group stopped for a couple hours at Biskupin which has a re-constructed fort that mimics the one built by the Lusatians ca 550 BC. By coincidence, Biskupin village was the birthplace of my paternal grandmother in 1869.

At the fort, I met an archaeologist that was on the faculty of Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza in Poznań. He showed me some examples of native Polish flint. One in particular, krzemionki opatówskie, is banded (has grey and white bands running through it). He pronounced it like "bonded", which is probably the way the Brits say it. Maybe he studied English in the UK, I'm not sure. Here in America, "band" rhymes with "sand" , "hand", command". But the word "bond" means to stick with or adhere to something (like glue),

Wow- leave a thread alone for a few days and watch it grow to astronomical proportions!

Thanks for the discussion. I think this pretty well answered my question:


It turns out I didn't recognize it because dative is not one of the cases I have studied so far. Now I know. Thank you.

Without making the thread grow to astronomical proportions, I can only add that the case of Dative is well known to the native English speakers.

I gave him (komu? - mu/jemu) the book
I gave them (komu? - im) the book.

Only in Modern English anyway, we no longer have inflectional indications used as case markers the way there are in Polish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic and the like:-) In English, "him" NEVER changes through morphological permutations such as "mu", "niego", "nim" etc....

umm...unless it is HE, HIS, or HIMSELF?really Lyzko for someone who claims to be a linguist you have remarkably little language awareness.....