Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

"Prosim" means "please" (as in "I request")

Thank you is "děkuji" :-)

Whoopsidaisy, Madziu! I really ought proofread my posts before sending them. However, 'dekuji' probably translates to "I thank", no?

-:)-:)

And this then spills over in English:

"In town where I born, there is much woods and mountain and countrysides in Poland. I work hard and have many job, so many work and few moneys....."

Riiight Mark.

It would seem that you can't count milk either ;)

You're right. I see you know German very well. It should be written according to some Germanists as:
Beutelrattenlattengitterkofferhottentottenstottertrottelmutterattentä ter

It's from Tuwim's book "Pegaz dęba" and is allegedly of Namibian origin, where you had had German-Hottentot cohabitation and means:

The killer of the Hottentot mother of a moron and stammerer, who was held in a weave box for kangaroos.

uh ..... who counts milk? other folks in your therapy group?

you can, however, count radios.

5 radios anyone?

You mean appliance? Radio reciever? Radio station? Channel? Because radio as is is hard to count.

Piec radiów, what's the problem. The form pięc radio also exists but wouldn't be accepted by most authorities.

I'd choose pięć radiów, mafketis :) It's the same as sześć jaj or sześć jajek, both are acceptable.

If it's the same then would you say "pięć jajów" ???

Until quite recently you did not conjugate words like radio, kakao, studio, but a few years ago it evolved and now it is allowed. "Witamy w naszym studiu", "dziś w radiu", etc. So maybe pięć radii, huh? Anyway I don't see when you would say that? What does it mean? How can you count radio?

Well, if you didn't have the systems that you have then you wouldn't have so many problems, would you? ;) ;) Miodek to the rescue :) :)

Sześć butelEK, sześć owiEC, sześć okiEN etc etc. You just have to know them. In English, it tends to be simpler. Most of the time, we just throw an 's' on to pluralise. Deer, sheep, mice etc etc are irregular.

I said it was the same in principle that you could have 2 versions. How could you possibly have misinterpreted that? If that can be the case for a Polish word, i.e jajko, then the mind boggles when you draft in foreign words where instinct and sound should play a part.

Nonono. For some reason, "radio" is uncountable in Polish (sounds silly, but why is "furniture" uncountable in English?).

You can only count radio by pieces: jeden radioodbiornik (odbiornik radiowy), dwa radioodbiorniki, etc.
And yes, it is equally acceptable to say "w radio" or "w radiu".
I would strongly advise you not to try using declinated forms of "kakao" ;-)
As for milk, it's uncountable both in Polish and English. Of course, you can say "kup dwa mleka" in the sense of "dwa kartony / dwie butelki mleka", but that's very informal and not considered "good grammar".

For the same reason, Magda. We have pieces of furniture and it depends on the item in question. Five tables, five wardrobes etc etc. Why would you have furnitures when furniture is a collective noun? Would you say spaces rather than space? (I mean space as a concept of the cosmos). It just is space as it is just furniture.

My question was purely rhetorical ;-)

Czech is more difficult than polish in my opinion because Czechs livedmainly in the cities while Poles were peasants.

I thought as much, just checking :) ;) You are the translator, right? Sorry, there are no avatars. If there were/was, I'd know that it was you and that you were joking :)

Yes.

Well good for you ;) ;) Post me your Canadian address and I'll forward your medal to you, ma man ;) ;) :) Dariusz, you are a smart lad so how about branching out this discussion? Some seem to want to apply logic and others accept what is understandable. Why are both 'jaj' and 'jajek' acceptable?

Well, I'm off for a wykałaczka (toothpick) (not łechtaczka, oops!) to clean the spaces between my teeth ;) ;)

You asked a question about your own language (you teach English, don't you) so I provided a correct answer. So what's your problem?

Space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise' etc etc. I'm sure you are familiar with that line, Darek. In that way it is singular. They travel through Space, not like a driver who moves into spaces (plural)

Yeah, I'm the poppy flower avatar girl :-)


As a Czech, I would ask you to reconsider your proposition. A little knowledge of the last 500 years of Czech history wouldn't go amiss if you wish to say anything on this subject ;-P

Aha, now I know :) Dariusz is no doubt brewing sth but it doesn't change the fact that we refer to Space as a single concept in terms of the cosmos. The final frontier, ONE frontier.

In English,

radio, non-count = that which is broadast over the radio set
radio, count = electronic device used to listen to radio broadcasts

There's similar usage in Polish.


Well, the sources I've seen suggest 'radioodbiornik' or 'odbiornik radiowy' for radio(set), but some people do use 'radio' for the object and suggest that 'radiów' is the preferred genetive plural.


You're taking away the wrong message here. The right message is that for forms that are very rare but theoretically possible Polish speakers can come up with more than one possible way that's clear and unambiguous. They are not necessarily sure about which one is approved of by grammar authorities, who might argue among themselves as well.

In other words, 4 different ways for describing a phenomenon that is not likely to ever be needed is not a sign of linguistic inefficiency or poverty. It is a sign of richness and flexibility.

I'm a little surprised that a native speaker of English can write such obvious garbage. Not trying to offend you, and I still consider your a good teacher of English. But remember this thread next time the talk about linguistic qualifications of Poles teaching English, compared to their British counterparts.


Yes.

3. Cosmic Spaces and Coloring Axioms

A space is cosmic if it is the continuous image of a separable metric space X. Equivalently, X is cosmic if it has a countable network, i.e., a countable collection N of subsets of X such that if x ∈ U with U open, then x ∈ N ⊆ U for some N ∈ N.

source (page 91)
www1.elsevier.com/homepage/sac/opit/book.pdf

In fact "spaces" (plural) is used frequently in regards to cosmos. You just haven't come across that yet until today, have you?

That's not a refutation at all. Parking spaces, dinner table spaces etc etc, many exist. What I'm saying is that Space is seen as a collective entity. You don't refer to the cosmos (Space) as the spaces or cosmoses, do you? The final frontier, ONE. It's that simple!! Not frontiers, but one last frontier.

I'm not talking about the spaces between friends here, I'm talking about a concrete area and noun.

One problem is that there are many, many words in English that can be used as count or non-count with a large or small difference in meaning.

In the case of space:

space, count = a particular place, reserved for something; part of a surface marked off on more than one side; (more rearely) an item on a list

space, non-count = a) a dimension (not the right word, but close enough) b) the cosmos beyond the earths atmosphere

That would mean there is only one Space.
A lot of astronomers would disagree with you.


The book quoted above does. And so do numerous scientists.

Life goes on. You need to keep up with your own language.

I'm aware that a lot of astronomers would try but that is another argument. Whether there are or not is a matter of conjecture.

John Gribbin may argue with Hawkings, they are experts in their field. As we know it now, there is just Space as referred to in Star Trek.

You are on a loser here Darek. I can give you many links that Space and The Cosmos are singular.