Breakdown of Dzieci skaczą w ogrodzie, bo spacerować im się dziś nie chce.
w
in
dziecko
the child
nie
not
bo
because
dziś
today
chcieć
to want
ogród
the garden
skakać
to jump
spacerować
to stroll
im
them
się
reflexive pronoun
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Questions & Answers about Dzieci skaczą w ogrodzie, bo spacerować im się dziś nie chce.
In the clause spacerować im się dziś nie chce, what roles do im and się play, and how would you translate this literally into English?
This is a common impersonal construction in Polish: komuś się chce/nie chce + infinitive means “somebody feels like/doesn’t feel like doing something.”
- im is the dative pronoun “to them.”
- się is part of the impersonal verb chcieć (“to want/feel like”) and has no reflexive meaning here.
Literally it reads: “To them it today does not feel like walking.” A natural English translation is “they don’t feel like walking today.”
Why is the verb spacerować in the infinitive rather than a conjugated form like spacerują?
Because in the komuś się chce/nie chce + infinitive structure, the activity (here walking) stays in the infinitive. The experiencers (im) are in the dative, not the subject. If you said „oni spacerują”, that would simply mean “they are walking,” without expressing “not wanting to.”
How does Polish express the idea of “are jumping” since English uses the present continuous?
Polish does not have a separate continuous tense. The simple present tense covers both English’s simple and continuous:
- skaczą can mean “they jump” (habitually) or “they are jumping” (right now), depending on context.
What’s the difference between saying w ogrodzie and po ogrodzie for “in/around the garden”?
- w ogrodzie means “in the garden” (inside its boundaries), describing location.
- po ogrodzie means “around/through the garden,” emphasizing movement along its area. Here, w ogrodzie simply tells us where the children are jumping.
Why is bo used instead of a more formal equivalent like ponieważ?
- bo is the everyday, colloquial conjunction “because.”
- ponieważ is more formal or literary. You could replace bo with ponieważ, but in spoken Polish bo is far more common.
Can I use dzisiaj instead of dziś, and is there any nuance?
Yes. dziś and dzisiaj both mean “today.”
- dziś is a bit shorter and common in speech and writing.
- dzisiaj is slightly more emphatic or formal, but in most contexts they’re interchangeable.
Why is there no pronoun like oni (“they”) before skaczą?
In Polish, subject pronouns are often omitted because the verb ending already indicates person and number. skaczą unambiguously means “they jump/are jumping,” so oni is redundant.
Is the word order in the second clause fixed? Could I say bo im się dziś nie chce spacerować instead?
Polish word order is fairly flexible. All these variants are correct:
- bo spacerować im się dziś nie chce
- bo im się dziś nie chce spacerować
- bo dziś im się nie chce spacerować
Moving the infinitive or pronouns slightly changes emphasis but not the basic meaning.