Jeśli chodzi o ...

One of the most common idiomatic phrases in Polish is chodzi o ... or some variation.  Phrases like this are called "discourse markers."  They don't give us new information; instead, they give us cues and clues as to where the speaker is going with his speech--for instance, what the subject is, or what we should pay special attention to.


I have had elementary level students who tried to translate the Polish phrase directly into English:


To chodzi o obiad  ----->  It walks about dinner.


As with most idioms, translation is not the best solution.  There are many better ways to translate the various forms of this expression.  Here are a few of them:


To chodzi o X              It's a question of X   OR   It's about X   
                                       OR  I mean X   OR  I'm talking about X


Chodzi mi o X             (same as above)


O co chodzi?               What's it all about?  


Jeśli chodzi o X ...       If it's a question [matter] of X  OR  If it's about X   OR  If you mean X


Nie o to chodzi            It's not about that  OR  That's not what I'm talking about 
                                      OR  That's not what I mean   OR  It's not a question of that.


Wiesz o co chodzi       You know what I mean  OR   You know what I'm talking about


Here's a short dialog that shows how some of these are used in English:


She:   I need to talk to you.
He:    Okay.  What about?
She:   I'm tired of your games.
He:    What are you talking about?  If it's a question of golf, I'll never give it up.
She:   It's not about golf.  I'm talking about us.  You know what I mean.
He:    If you're talking about my secretary, there's nothing going on ...
She:   It's not a question of something "going on."  It's about honesty.

True vs The Truth

Now that we know the difference between a verb, a noun, an adjective, etc., let's take a look at a confusing issue.


We have two words in English that students often confuse.  One is truth and the other is true.


Using them correctly is fairly easy once we realise that truth is a noun (which can be countable or uncountable) and true is an adjective.


In other words, something can be true (or its opposite, false) just as something can be black or white, large or small, beautiful or ugly.


Is the story about John true? 


But we don't always use the adjective true.  Sometimes we use the noun truth, as in the following examples:


Tell the truth.  (Whatever you say should be true.)


I'm looking for the truth.  (I want to find out what is true in this situation.)


Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?  (This is used in courts of law in the U.S.  When the court "swears in" a witness, it wants that witness to talk about the incident in question--to say what is true, to leave nothing out, and not to add any false statements.)


We cannot say, Tell me the true, or This is a truth story, because we would be mixing up the functions of a noun and an adjective.

Nouns, Verbs, etc.

Before we go any further, it might be a good idea to look at some of the technical terms we use when talking about English grammar.  Take a look at the glossary below.  The English word is on the left, the Polish equivalent on the right.

noun                  rzeczownik

verb                   czasownik

determiner       zaimek wskazujący

conjunction     spójnik

pronoun           zaimek

adjective          przymiotnik

adverb              przysłówek

preposition      przyimek

article               przedimek

You don't have to know these words--either in English or in Polish--to use English correctly.  But if you need help using English, it's sometimes a lot easier to use these words than to give 1,000 examples.  We'll be using these expressions in future posts.  

We want him to ...

Here's an example where English uses a different grammar structure than we might expect.


Most Polish students tend to say something like this:


We want that he doesn't give us homework.


This is a translation of Polish grammar, and it seems to make sense.  How else would we say it?  Unfortunately, it's not correct. The structure we use in English goes like this:


We don't want him to give us homework.
OR
We want him not to give us homework.


When we speak in English about our wants, desires and intentions for other people, we use the form


I want, you want, he wants, etc. + object pronoun (i.e., me, you, him, her, it, us, them) or noun + infintive verb


So we can say any of the following:


I want her to marry me.
She wants me to leave her alone.


They want their elder son to set a good example for his siblings.
He wants them to let him live his own life.


We want you to go to university and get a good education.
You want us to stop interfering with your decisions.


Negatives can be made either by changing I want, etc. to I don't want, or by adding the word not before the infinitive verb.


We don't want you to drop out of school.
We want you not to drop out of school.


The first structure is a bit less awkward, but sometimes we need to use the second.  Very often, though, instead of using a negative version of this structure, we prefer to use a different structure:


We'd prefer you didn't drop out of school.

I don't think so, do you?

Happy new year!  Here's a simple but important one.  I hear many Polish students of English answering questions like this:
  
I think yes.
I think no.
I think I won't pass the exam.


All of these are clear enough--but not natural English.  In the case of the first two examples, native speakers are more likely to say:


I think so.
I don't think so.


Note that we say this only in isolation, that is, if we're only going to make a short response to a question, or a fact or opinion that was already stated.  For example:


--Is it getting colder outside?    --I think so.
--I bet he's got a lot of money.    --I don't think so.


We do not use this form when we're introducing an opinion or a fact.  We don't say:


I think so that it's getting colder outside.


In that case, we'd just take out the word so and say:


I think that it's getting colder outside.  


When we are expressing a negative opinion, that is, saying that we disagree, we are more likely to use this form:


I don't think I'm going to pass the exam.


instead of:


I think I'm not going to pass the exam.


In other words, we move the negative (not) so that it applies to the verb think. 

Lectures and Readings

Today's entry is about vocabulary confusion caused by something called a "false friend."  That is, a word that looks similar in two languages, but does not mean the same thing.  We've got a lot of these in English and Polish, and we'll be looking at quite a few of them.  Today's example is the word lecture.  It looks like lektura, so many students assume there's no difference, and use one as they would use the other.

However, English lecture does not mean "something we have to read for school (usually something long and boring)."  The word for that is reading--very often called required reading.  For example: in many American schools, the Constitution is required reading.  In this case, reading can be a countable or an uncountable noun.  We might say, for example: I've got five readings to do this weekend OR this lesson contains a dialog and a reading (countable).  But we can also say: My literature teacher assigned a lot of reading for this semester (uncountable).

A lecture is what we call in Polish wykład--that is, somebody giving a talk or a speech, usually about an academic subject.  For example: today a professor at Jagiellonian University is giving a lecture on economic theory.

The words lecture and lektura, by the way, both come from the Latin word for read, but have taken slightly different paths in their evolution.

Getting to Know You

Here's another area of frequent confusion.  I often hear Polish students saying things like, "Then I will get to know what really happened."  There seems to be a common misconception that Polish dowiedzieć się should be translated as "to get to know."

Actually, in English we "get to know" people, not facts.

First we meet somebody--we are introduced to them at a party, or we start to talk to them in a business or social situation.  After we have met someone, we usually know his name--perhaps not his full name, but at least his first name--and something about him, for instance, where he works, where he lives, who his friends are, something that he likes.  Still, we can't say we really know this person.  We usually don't say we know somebody until we have spent some time with him and know more about him.

The next stage is getting to know him, or getting acquainted with him.  The words acquainted and acquaintance scare many Polish students off, but they are really not that difficult.  This stage usually lasts from a few weeks to a few months, as we spend more time with him.  We find out more about his personality, his likes and dislikes, perhaps about his past, his family, or his plans for the future.

Also, we use the word acquaintance to mean somebody whom we have met, or whom we know slightly--in other words, we know her name and her face and perhaps what her job is, but we don't really know anything else about her.  In other words, this person is not a stranger, but not exactly a friend either.

Finally, when we have gotten to know someone, or have gotten acquainted with him, we say that we know him and we usually say he is a friend, or maybe an associate (in business).  We use the word friend much more freely and loosely in English than we use equivalent words in Polish and other languages.  We do not have to be intimate with somebody to call that person a friend.  We just have to know her and be on friendly terms with her.

Now let's go back to dowiedzieć się.  If we can't say "get to know," what can we say?

We usually say to find out or to learn.  Here are a few sample sentences:

Jane found out who had stolen her bicycle.
I learned the truth about this incident from the newspapers.
Did you ever find out who sent you that anonymous valentine?
I don't know what happened, but I'm going to find out.
It wasn't until the next morning that he learned the results of the election.