About? - Polish Grammar; worried about the bill - martwi się rachunkiem. Instrumental case

I'm teaching myself Polish and I have another question about grammar. While on a language learning website, I saw the sentence Kobieta martwi się rachunkiem which supposedly means 'The woman is worried about the bill'.

Although it also says that o is about, and I'm just wondering where the about is coming from in the sentence^

Thank you.

Sophaloaf you can't translate literally word for word from English to Polish. In this sentence the change of the noun 'rachunek' to rachunkiem indicates the 'about' if you understand me.

@Sophaloaf

You are wasting your time trying to learn Polish from a lousy website. Use a good textbook instead. Fortunately, the best one is free for you to use at the following address:

lektorek.org/lektorek/firstyear/lessons

Also, use a good reference grammar. There are two good ones by the same author who wrote the textbook above. One for beginners, which you can download here:

lektorek.org/lektorek/firstyear/nutshell.pdf

and one for more advanced students, which you can find here:

lektorek.org/lektorek/grammar.pdf

It's going to take you several years of very hard, time-consuming work to learn Polish, but these books will save you a great deal of time and trouble. They are far, far better than the other books you will find, and far, far, far better than any website.

@Atch
Yes declensed form of "rachunek" in instrumental case seems to include the "about" Sophaloaf is asking... well... about :) You could translate "The woman is worried about the bill" quite literally into "Kobieta martwi się o rachunek" though.

That would be most unusual to say that about a bill that has already arrived and is probably quite high. Usually we use 'martwic się o + acc' when speaking about something that is likely to happen in the future:

- Martwię się o ciebie (o to co z tobą będzie, co się z tobą wydarzy );
- Martwię się o wynik wyborów (o to, kto zwycięży).

Not exactly. In Polish we we use different constructions when talking about the object of our worries or about the cause of the worries.
E.g.:

1. Martwię się o Tomka, bo jest chory = I'm worried about Tomek because he's ill
but:
2. Martwię się chorobą Tomka = I'm worried about Timek's illness

The these examples Tomek is the object of my worries, while the illness is cause of my worries.

So in your example "Kobieta martwi się o rachunek" means that the woman is worried about something "unpleasant that happened/will happen to the bill" - which doesn't make much sense...

Cinek

I meant only that particular example and it is quite close to literal.


Yes but without any context i assume it's about the bill that not yet arrived and in that case you can say it that way.

Nope. "Kobieta martwi sie o (nadchodzący/przyszły) rachunek" translated from 'The woman is worried about the (upcoming)bill'. simply correct.

@NoToForeigners
If the bill was already delivered you'd say "Kobieta martwi się rachunkiem"