Breakdown of On zna angielski i polski.
i
and
on
he / it (m)
znać
to know (someone or something)
polski
Polish
Questions & Answers about On zna angielski i polski.
The lesson teaches umieć (to know how to). Why use zna here instead of umie?
In Polish, there are different verbs for "to know". Znać means to be familiar with a noun, like a person, place, or language. Umieć means "to know how to do something" and is followed by an action word (an infinitive). Since English and Polish are nouns here, we must use a form of znać.
Does znać follow the -m / -sz conjugation pattern we are learning?
Yes, it fits perfectly! The dictionary form is znać. The "I" form is znam (I know) and the "you" form is znasz (you know). For "he", "she", or "it", you just drop the ending, leaving zna (he knows).
Why aren't angielski and polski capitalized like they are in English?
In Polish, names of languages are always written with lowercase letters. You only capitalize the names of countries (like Polska) and the nouns for specific people from those countries (like Polak for a Polish man).
Zna takes a direct object, so shouldn't angielski and polski change their endings for the accusative case?
They actually are in the accusative case! However, the words angielski and polski act as masculine "inanimate" (non-living) things here. For inanimate masculine words, the accusative form looks exactly the same as the basic dictionary form.