Word
Ta senność jest okropna. Całą noc byłem ledwo przytomny.
Meaning
This sleepiness is awful. I was barely awake all night.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Ta senność jest okropna. Całą noc byłem ledwo przytomny.
być
to be
ten
this (m)
okropny
terrible
cały
whole, entire
Questions & Answers about Ta senność jest okropna. Całą noc byłem ledwo przytomny.
Why is the phrase for all night translated as całą noc instead of using the preposition przez (przez całą noc)?
This is the bare accusative of continuous duration. When you want to express how long an uninterrupted state or action lasts, you can use a time expression in the accusative case without any preposition. While przez całą noc is also grammatically correct, the bare accusative całą noc is very common and sounds perfectly natural for stating the duration of a continuous state, like being barely awake.
If całą noc is in the accusative case, why doesn't the noun noc end in -ę?
Noc is a feminine noun, but it belongs to a category of feminine nouns that end in a consonant (like rzecz or krew). For these nouns, the accusative form is exactly the same as the nominative form. However, the adjective modifying it still takes the regular feminine accusative ending -ą, giving us całą noc.
Why is the English word awake translated as przytomny here instead of a word related to waking up, like obudzony?
Przytomny literally means conscious, lucid, or alert. While obudzony simply means physically awoken from sleep, przytomny describes mental clarity. The speaker is emphasizing that their brain was barely functioning or conscious due to the awful sleepiness, which sounds much more natural in Polish for this context.
How does the word relate to the basic Polish word for sleep?