jesc/zjesc and possible english translations for the imperfective/perfective

imperfective..........................perfective

ja bede jadl/jadla.....................zjem

What could these verbs translate to in english?

and also, in the sentence (which is why im really asking the question.......)How would "zjem" translate here also. As im not too sure. Well aqctually "zjem kolacje".

(1) Wieczorem zjem kolacje, a potem pojde do kina.

cheers

I will be (at that moment/time) eating
I will eat
Example :
Ja będę jadł kolację o ósmej - I will be eating supper at eight
Ja zjem kolację o ósmej - I will eat supper at eight

There are other possibilities: jadać and zjadać (imperfective frequentative forms):
We Francji będę codziennie jadał ślimaki. (In France I will be eating snails daily -- they don't call 'em żabojady for nothing!).
Tomek obiecał, że od dziś będzie zjadał wszystko, co na talerzu. (Tommy promised that from today we would be eating up everything on his plate).

JEM o godzinie siódmej obiad. (regularnie!)

ZJEM tego wieczora obiad o godzinie szóstej. (ten raz!)

There's a Polish proverb which might help to keep the idea of 'jeść' vs. 'zjeść' clear:
"Gdzie kucharek sześć, tam nie ma co JEŚĆ." = Too many cooks spoil the broth (lit. 'Where the cooks are six, there's no more food to fix.')

Nie ma co jeść = There is nothing to be eaten

Of course, if only for the sake of the rhyme, I translated it as I did-:)))))

Thank you ! all :))

i am confused again, i understand that polish has different ways of saying things. but
Nie ma co jeść = There is nothing to be eaten.
should that not be
nie ma nigdy jeść.
"Gdzie kucharek sześć, tam nie ma co JEŚĆ." = Too many cooks spoil the broth (lit. 'Where the cooks are six, there's no more food to fix.')

if you want to say 'Where the cooks are six, there's no more food to fix.')
but that is nothing like, Too many cooks spoil the broth.
should that not have been.
zbyt duźo kucharek psuć rosół.

surely saying what you want to say is, better that trying to establish what it says (in other words).
and what else does ' co ' mean. i thought it meant ' what'

chaza

On (he) nie ma (don't have) co (what/anything) jeść (to eat).
So "he don't have anything to eat" sound perfectly ok in english, doesn't it?

We can also say:
Nie ma nic do jedzenie - there is nothing to eat.
On nie ma nic do jedzenia - he has nothing to eat.

W lodówce nie ma nic do jedzenia. Trzeba coś kupić.


Nice translation :)


why nigdy? nigdy means never.

W tym domu nigdy nie ma nic do jedzenia

W tym domu nigdy nie ma co jeść... that one sound a little bit lame... don't ask me why.


yep, that's surely good advise ;)

sorry zet
i did mean to say nic not nigdy.
it kind of sounds o.k. but ' co' means 'what' not anything, so;
on nie ma cokolwiek jeść, he doesnt have anything to eat
sounds better.
i read this a lot here, if you want to say
'Where the cooks are six, there's no more food to fix.' thats great and people like me can follow and learn, but why is it that polish writes one thing, but it means another.

for example, in some of my phrases i learn from there is a phrase,
'may i have the check please'
i would have written
mogę ma rachunek proszę. but the phrase book says
proszę rachunek (please bill).

do you see where i am coming from

chaza

yes.


you can say also: "mogę prosić rachunek?" or "mogę poprosić o rachunek?"

Chaza, surely no phrase in any one language can be translated verbatim into another. 'Too many cooks spoil the broth' means when there is more than one foodie in the kitchen, you're bound to have trouble and the 'broth' (symbolic here for 'food') will thus be ruined. The Polish means the same, merely with different wording which therefore has a different cultural impact on a Polish native speaker. The German though is practically parallel with English: 'Zu viele Koeche verderben den Brei.'

i understand what you say lyzko, and i accept that other languages do say things differently, i have no problem with that. but if you want to say

' Too many cooks spoil the broth'
then say that. for you to say
'Where the cooks are six, there's no more food to fix.'
is different no matter what language you speak. i suppose its the matter of saying what you mean, and not talking in some kind of criptic fashion and expect the learners to grasp what you say.

the word order is one issue, but to compound that with the criptic element seems not only counter productive, but extremely confusing, the language is hard enough to learn.

like my ealier post claims to say ' czy mogę ma rachunek proszę' is fine and one can follow what you want to say, so why say 'proszę rachunek (please bill).

chaza

Point well taken, Chaza. Again, I was merely striving for rhyme scheme with my version, and admittedly, was unconcerned with the literal accuracy of my 'translation'LOL

hmm, maybe because that's how Poles say it? Who said 'czy mogę ma rachunek proszę' is fine? It's not! We just say 'poproszę rachunek' when we mean 'may I have the check' and that's it.

See that from the opposite side. Why to say 'may I have the check' when 'please bill' is fine?

Cinek

i wasn't trying to be flipant cinek, i was just making the point especially on here where people are trying to learn your language, that they should say what they mean. here in england we often say ' how are you doing' which really means ' hello' or ' are you alright'. but to the learner who encouters that phrase when they want to know how to say hello, would be confused. once someone has learnt the laguage they can then get used to all the acronyms you have like we have. but as my posts have demonstrated with the bill please example. i would not feel happy saying to the waiter, 'bill please' to me it sounds rude, i would have to say' can i have the bill please'. over here we still have people who do just click their fingers at the waiter, who instictively knows what they want.

none of my posts have been other than getting the know the language. in your post cinek you said that 'czy mogę ma rachunek proszę' is not fine, some may disagree being polite and cival costs nothing, in fact 'czy mogę ma rachunek proszę' is better than 'poprszę rachunek', it is more polite and respectful.

chaza

I agree, Chaza (...and I didn't see your remarks as in any way "flippant", by the way!) England certainly does use certain stock 'polite phrases', as in the US too, quite differently from many other countries, particularly those in Northern Europe-:))

It's not more polite, it's simply grammatically WRONG. It's a direct translation from English and I hope you know that direct translations never work.

If you wanted to be extra special polite you could say: "Uprzejmie proszę o rachunek" or "Czy mogę prosić o rachunek?" but "Poproszę rachunek" is fine, there is nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

Nie ma co jeść - there is nothing to eat
Nie ma nigdy co jeść - should be: Nigdy nie ma nic do jedzenia - there is never anything to eat

I agree with Magdalena. You wrote that:


and the 'Poproszę rachunek' exactly belongs to that category. It's just an acronim that expresses a polite way of asking someone to get the bill, and it translates to 'can I have the bill please' in the way that the meaning and the politeness level are the same in both languages (even though the used words are different).

As I (and others) wrote you many times: stop translating words and start reading and listening to people speaking Polish. To learn the language you must use all your senses, not only dictionary.

Cinek

Aaaamen, Cinku-:))

To paraphrase Shaw, the only time my foreign language acquisition was interrupted was when I reached for my phrasebook!

Such good advice! When I first came to Poland, I just listened like hell and did little speaking at first. I didn't even bring a dictionary. By the time I was ready to talk, sure I fell flat on my face a few times, but I was helped back on my feet by friendly Poles, dusted myself off and kept right on speaking (corrections and all!).

It doesn't make sense in Polish. It only makes sense in English.

when you say it doesnt make any sense in polish, are you saying you do not know what i have said. that is a big difference to being ungramatical. you know that when you are learning sentenses will be ungramatical, but i think you are being a little unfair by saying it makes no sense. others seem to be able to point out the errors, so iot must make sense.

chaza

chaza objectivly speaking this sentence could be pretty hard to decipher for a Polish person out of context - used in this specific restaurant setting it would be understood what you mean - the main thing is rachunek here and mogę also helps - so you would end up with that bill you requested

the implication here are it is good/helpful to have lot's of vocabulary (like rachunek)
the grammatical forms of nouns are not so important, nouns in basic forms are nearly as informative as the declined forms
it is helpful to know most important forms of the most important verbs like the verb móc(móc is an infintive of course) - in the most important forms I would include the present tense personal forms (like the first person form you used) but also the infinitive

you can stick to the infinitive (basic dicitonary) form for other verbs - cause it is pretty difficult to keep track of all those conjugation patterns for a start

learning to deal with the aspect of Polish verbs (the perfective and imperfective in short) seems to be pretty difficult and it is not absolutely necassary for a rugged communication

it is very useful to know the most important prepositions and pronouns and their forms - like ja,ty, tobie , ciebie, im, wy, was, pod, nad, do, od, przy, z, o, za

there is not so many of basic pronouns and their forms an they are a nice introduction to the world of cases
as for prepositions - it is a wild and quite vast area - they oftentimes don't work the same as in English and it helps to know what preposition should be used in a given situation - there is also this thing that some phrases English that make use of prepositions have Polish counterparts without any (by car - samochodem) (this is an importan Instrumental case of nouns which generally translates into English as 'with the use of 'a noun')

thank you gumishu
at last someone who understands what i have been trying to say. while i strive to learn the grammar, the basic language is the most important, but i do take your points and agree.

thank you

chaza

Chaza,I really don't understand your point. Why are you blaming us for telling you how to speak proper Polish? What do you want from us then? Should we say "Chaza, your Polish is almost perfect and don't worry about such details like grammar, and we'll do our best to understand you and won't let you feel unfair" ?

Of course, your sentence would be understood by most people and gumishu explained you why. But still, it's gramatically incorrect. Telling you that it's acceptable is a way to nowhere, because you'll never learn speaking proper Polish.

Sorry for being harsh, but you were given so many good advices on this forum but you're still like a guy who want's to learn swimming by reading books. Man, throw your theories away and jump into it :-)

Cinek

I'll have to concur with my colleague here too, Chaza. Being told a white lie just to make you feel better, is nothing more than a quick fix and will never help you to improve your Polish (if that is in fact your goal).

well cinek, i think you have misunderstood. i was issuing no blame to anyone, while the grammar is important and i would agree with that, as you have seen with my other posts, when i have raised an issue bearing in mind i was a total beginner, what i needed was gentle guuidance which i did get from some. but i was bombarded with indepth grammar,grammar.grammar.

there seem to be a problem in recognising we are beginners and not ligulistic experts, and further to that we dont want to be linguistic experts, if we did we would go down that line. most of my polish friend have said ' dont bother too much with the grammar'. no i dont want anyone to tell me my polish is the best they have heard, i know its not, but its getting better.

i do value all comments even those that might seem harsh, and you are no wrong, i suppose my point is, remember we are beginners and too much grammar is too much, who cares if we get the sentense slightly wrong, the language is being drip fed to us so it will take time.

i do thank you all for your assistance.

chaza

But it wasn't me who started the discussion whether your sentence is understood, acceptable, polite etc. We (native speakers) just told how to say it properly.


Yes, I agree. At your level too many grammar details won't help. But it doesn't mean that you may speak improper grammar when you are told how to speak proper one.

Cinek

thank to you all, your comments are taken note of. on a positive note, i can only get better, or should i say ' mogę tylko dostawaj lepiej'

thanks

chaza