Czy na końcu tego zdania ma być pytajnik czy kropka?

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Breakdown of Czy na końcu tego zdania ma być pytajnik czy kropka?

• czy: question marker
• ten: this
• zdanie: the sentence

Questions & Answers about Czy na końcu tego zdania ma być pytajnik czy kropka?

Why does the sentence start with czy?

At the beginning of a sentence, czy is a question marker. It tells you that the whole sentence is a yes/no-type question or an alternative question.

Unlike English, Polish does not usually make questions by changing word order, so czy often does that job instead.

So:

• Ma być kropka. = There should be a full stop.
• Czy ma być kropka? = Should there be a full stop?

In your sentence, czy signals from the start: this is a question.

Why is czy used again later in the sentence?

The second czy means or in the sense of choosing between two possibilities.

So the sentence has two different uses of czy:

• the first Czy = marks the whole sentence as a question
• the second czy = or

That is why Czy ... pytajnik czy kropka? means:

Should there be a question mark or a full stop?

This is very normal in Polish.

What does na końcu mean here, and why not w końcu?