User:Stan88

What's difficult about the language pair polish <--> english ?

Main problems with Polish<-->English pair :

A)

In English a form of adjective does not depend on the noun it is describing. But in Polish adjectives and determiners have to agree in case, number and genders with the noun they modify.

So for example : I want a blue cat ( Ja chcę niebieskiego kota ).

"kota"(cat) is in the accusative case so "niebieski"(blue) must be in the same case. That's why it is not "Ja chcę niebieski kot" but "Ja chcę niebieskiego kota".

Also the inflection of a noun depends of the gender.

There are three main genders: masculine, feminine and neuter

Cat("kot") is masculine.

But parrot("papuga") is feminine.

So : I want a blue parrot ( Ja chcę niebieską papugę) - not "niebieskiego"

Each feminine noun has "a" suffix

Each neuter noun has "o" suffix

If a noun hasn't got "o" or "a" suffix it must be masculine.

There are some exceptions of the rule, but there is quite few of them.

B)

Adding endings to lemmas is not sufficient.

Often some letter inside lemma changes when inflecting by cases or people

For example :

koło(circle) : I don't love circles -> Ja nie kocham kół

Some letters like 'o' or 'e' or 'a' are likely to change to 'ó','ę','ą'.

It is called alternation and it is caused by apophony.

C)

Possesive pronouns often change when inflecting by cases, people and genders in Polish.

But there are no cases and genders(grammar) in English.

So "Robot's" -> "Robota" (Robot is masculine)

but

"Book's" -> "Książki" (Książka is feminine)

and

"Chair's" -> "Krzesła" (Krzesło is neuter)

D)

In English the word order is fixed but in Polish it isn't.

Basic word order in Polish is SVO.

But it is possible to move words around in the sentence.

For example : My favorite dish is spagetti carbonara ( Moim ulubionym daniem jest spagetti carbonara) but it can also be (Moim daniem ulubionym spagetti carbonara jest).

So it might me a problem when translating from Polish to English, because an order of the words in sentence should be changed.

E)

No = Nie when added to adjectives, nouns, participles is often joined.

So "Not careful" would be nie + troskliwy = nietroskliwy

And "Not religious" would be nie + religijny = niereligijny

But "Not for smokers" would be nie + dla palaczy = nie dla palaczy (with space)

F)

Polish is a pro-drop language :

Subject pronouns are frequently dropped.

For example: ma kota (literally "has a cat") may mean "he/she/it has a cat".

It is also possible to drop the object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context.

For example, ma ("has") or nie ma ("has not") may be used as an affirmative or negative answer to a question "does... have...?".

It is very important part of the language and it is not the old-fashioned way to express yourself.

G)

In Polish there are sentences without any subject, which can't be literally translated to English.

Such as można ("it is possible"), wolno ("it is permitted") or pada ("it is raining").

In English you must use "it" to express yourself this way, which can't be used in Polish.

H)

In English there are no cases but in Polish they exist.

Prepositions in Polish require the fixed case in noun group, which they are describing (Not exactly fixed, because some prepositions may have different meanings).

For example : bez pięknego kota(without pretty cat), z pięknym kotem(with pretty cat), dla pięknego kota(for pretty cat), przeciwko pięknemu kotu(against pretty cat)

In all these examples, in English there is always preposition + pretty cat, but in Polish it is not constant.