Breakdown of Oni powyłączali wczoraj wszystkie monitory.
oni
they (masculine personal)
wczoraj
yesterday
wszystek
all (the)
monitor
monitor
powyłączać
to turn off (many things)
Questions & Answers about Oni powyłączali wczoraj wszystkie monitory.
Why use powyłączali here instead of the standard perfective wyłączyli?
Powyłączali uses the distributive prefix po-, which emphasizes that they turned off the monitors one by one, or that there were many monitors involved. Wyłączyli just states the simple fact that the monitors were turned off, without that sequential flavor.
To make this distributive verb, why do we add po- to the imperfective wyłączać rather than the perfective wyłączyć?
That is a standard rule for distributive verbs! When creating a verb that means doing something to multiple objects one by one, Polish attaches the po- prefix to the imperfective stem. So the imperfective wyłączać becomes the new perfective verb powyłączać.
Does powyłączać always require a plural object like monitory?
Yes. Because the po- prefix in this context specifically means doing an action to multiple things distributively, it requires a plural object (or sometimes multiple subjects). You cannot use it to say you turned off a single monitor.
Since monitor is a masculine noun, why is the adjective wszystkie instead of wszyscy?
Because monitor is an inanimate masculine noun. In the plural, only masculine personal nouns (like men or mixed groups of people) take forms like wszyscy. Everything else, including inanimate masculine objects like monitory, uses the non-masculine-personal form wszystkie. Notice that the subject oni is masculine personal, which is why the verb is powyłączali and not powyłączały.
Learn Oni powyłączali wczoraj wszystkie monitory and more in Polish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free