Question 1

Why use pooglądać and poczytać instead of the usual perfectives obejrzeć and przeczytać?

Accepted Answer

Both pooglądać and poczytać use the prefix po- to show that the action will be done for a limited, short time ("for a bit" or "for a while"). If you used the standard perfectives obejrzeć and przeczytać, it would mean you intend to finish the entire thing—like watching a specific movie to the end or reading a whole book. Here, you just want to engage in the activity for a little while without worrying about finishing it.

Question 2

Since these verbs have the po- prefix, are they grammatically perfective or imperfective?

Accepted Answer

They are perfective. Even though watching TV or reading are ongoing activities, adding the delimitative po- prefix turns them into perfective verbs. This is because the prefix puts a clear boundary around the action: you are grammatically treating that "short session of reading" as a single, completed block of time.

Question 3

Why use albo here instead of lub or czy?

Accepted Answer

You could technically use lub, but albo is much more natural in everyday speech when presenting two alternative choices. You definitely cannot use czy here, because czy translates to "or" only when asking a question (for example: "Do you want to read czy watch TV?").

Question 4

How would a woman say this sentence?

Accepted Answer

A female speaker would say Chciałabym. The verb chcieć in the conditional mood agrees with the gender of the speaker (-bym for masculine, -abym for feminine). The rest of the sentence remains exactly the same because the infinitives and their objects do not change based on who is speaking.

Chciałbym pooglądać telewizję albo poczytać książkę.

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