Breakdown of W weekend bardzo rozpadało się w górach.
bardzo
very
w
in / on (a day)
weekend
the weekend
góra
mountain
Questions & Answers about W weekend bardzo rozpadało się w górach.
How does the circumfix roz- ... się change the meaning of the base verb padać here?
The base verb padać simply means 'to rain' or 'to fall'. Wrapping it in roz- and się adds both momentum and intensity. Instead of just stating that it rained, rozpadało się means the rain started, gained momentum, and became heavy, much like saying 'it really started to pour' in English.
If rozpadało się already implies heavy rain, isn't adding bardzo redundant?
While rozpadało się does imply a strong downpour, Polish speakers frequently add bardzo to emphasize the intensity even more. It is a completely natural way to express that it started raining exceptionally hard.
Why is rozpadało in the neuter form if there is no neuter subject in the sentence?
Weather phenomena in Polish are typically expressed using impersonal constructions. Because there is no actual noun performing the action (similar to the dummy 'it' in the English 'it rained'), the past tense verb defaults to the third-person singular neuter form, ending in -o.
Both w weekend and w górach use the preposition w. Are they in the same grammatical case?